植物提取物自古以来一直被用于传统药典。其中一部分已经证明是癌症治疗的非常好的药物替代品，因为它们靶向对癌细胞关键的代谢途径，例如细胞凋亡、能量产生的解剖途径和对氧化应激的反应。由于一些抗癌药物已被证明产生剂量依赖的生物学相反效应，因此确定化合物在哪个剂量范围内具有最大的治疗效益至关重要。酸角树（Annona muricata）或藤蜜果树在波多黎各的风景中很常见。虽然在体外和体内进行的许多研究确实报告了从藤蜜果根、果实、树皮和叶子提取的提取物在各种癌细胞中具有抑制增殖的活性，但藤蜜果提取物对头颈癌发展的效果一直被忽视。此外，藤蜜果提取物对健康/非癌细胞的生物活性基本上被忽视了。本研究报告了以乙醇藤蜜果叶提取物对鳞状细胞癌细胞株9和25以及健康/非癌细胞人牙龈成纤维细胞系1进行的体外抑制增殖/抗癌行为研究。我们的结果表明，藤蜜果提取物在所有测试的浓度下对鳞状细胞癌细胞产生细胞死亡，而对成纤维细胞则表现出浓度依赖的双相浓度依赖/荷尔蒙效应。这表明，在低剂量下，藤蜜果提取物中的植物化学物质可能为抑制头颈癌的发展提供潜在的治疗途径。

Plant-extracted compounds have been used for centuries in traditional pharmacopeia. Some of them have proven to be excellent drug alternatives for cancer treatment as they target metabolic pathways that are key to cancer cells such as apoptosis, energy-producing catabolic pathways, and the response to oxidative stress. Since some anticancer drugs have been shown to produce dose dependent biologically opposite effects, it is crucial to determine the range of doses for which the compounds have maximum therapeutic benefits. Annona muricata or Graviola is a tropical tree that is common in the Puerto Rican landscape. Although a plethora of studies conducted in vitro and in vivo studies have indeed reported that extracts prepared from the Graviola root, fruit, bark, and leaves possess antiproliferative activities in a large variety of cancer cells, the efficiency of Graviola extracts to curb the progression of head and neck cancers has been overlooked. Furthermore, the bioactivity of Graviola extracts on sane/non-cancerous cells has largely been ignored. The present work reports the in vitro antiproliferative/anticancer behavior of an ethanolic Graviola leaf extract on squamous cell carcinoma cell lines 9 and 25 vs. a sane/non-cancerous human gingival fibroblast cell line-1. Our results show that the Graviola extract induces cell death in the squamous cell carcinoma cell lines at all concentrations tested and a dose-dependent biphasic concentration-dependent/hormetic effect on the fibroblastic cells. This suggests that, at low doses, the phytochemicals present in the prepared Graviola extract could offer potential therapeutic avenues for curbing the progression of head and neck cancers.