Edible plants are rich in natural ingredients associated with a variety of biological activities, including anti-inflammation, antioxidant, and anti-cancer, and are widely used in traditional medicine. Natural nanotherapeutics (NTs) derived from edible plants are source-wide and cost-effective and exhibit remarkably effective in various cancers.

We extracted extracellular vesicles (EVs) from 2 plants, garlic and onion, that are known to have cytotoxic effects in bladder cancer. We evaluated the cytotoxic effects of these EVs by assessing their ability to selectively reduce the viability of malignant blabber tumor cells (T24, grade II transitional cell carcinoma) compared with normal urinary epithelial cells and benign blabber tumor cells (RT4, transitional cell papilloma).

EVs from garlic and onion showed strong cytotoxic effects on malignant cells T24 at 10 µg/mL, but not for the normal urinary epithelial cells and benign tumor cells RT4. As the concentration of EVs increased, cell viability gradually decreased, reaching more than 50% inhibition at 50 µg/mL in malignant tumor cells. We also identified the synergistic effect of EVs from garlic and onion and established optimized treatment concentrations.

Our findings indicate that EVs derived from garlic and onion are promising candidates that demonstrate efficacy and selectivity towards malignant tumor cells compared to normal cells.