الفهرس 
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Abstract
Summary
SCC is the most frequent malignant neoplasm affecting the head and neck region, and the incidence of SCC has been gradually increasing over the past few decades despite recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment(5).
Recently, increasing interest in alternative PCD types, other than apoptosis, emerged once different tools to study these other genetically controlled systems at the molecular level became available(9). The status of autophagy in cancer therapy has also been given increasing attention(78).
The dual role of autophagy in cancer is still controversial. Some studies indicated that malignancy is correlated with the suppression of autophagy, and the contradictory results have also been reported(150).
Accumulating evidence shows that miRNA expression is de-regulated in many aspects of cell pathophysiology, including HNSCC(26). In principle, autophagy could be regulated by miRNAs targeting the mRNA of key molecules that indirectly induce or suppress autophagy(189).
This study aimed to retrieve novel miRNA and selected autophagy target genes involved in HNSCC development and progression, and to characterize the efficacy of phytochemical extracts of rosemary on modulating miRNA-related HNSCC expression with its target ATG, utilizing HNSCC cell line.
The study included nine groups, and the cell viability percentage for all groups was measured after 48 hours of treatment with different doses of the phytochemicals prepared according to the IC50 value. Real-time qPCR was performed for selected miRNA in this study, while cell viability was evaluated using MTT essay.
The results of this work showed that the statistically significantly lowest mean viability % was obtained with combination of high dose with
Summary
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the value of 31%, in which HEp2 cells were treated with a combined dose of 80 μmole concentration of CA and 45 μmole concentration of CS, and cells showed the smallest number of cancer cells and the highest number of apoptotic cells compared to all the other groups.
The real-time qPCR results emphasized the MTT assay results where the combination (High dose) group showed the statistically significantly lowest mean fold change values for both miR-661 and ATG4-B. Also, there was a statistically significant direct (positive) correlation between fold change of miR-661 and fold change of ATG4-B.
According to the previously mentioned results, it was concluded that the rosemary extracts CA and CS have an inhibitory effect on miR-661 which regulates ATG4-B, and the inhibition of miR-661 results in inhibition of autophagy that can effectively enhance apoptotic cell death, establishing autophagy inhibitors as potential therapeutic agents for cancer therapy