Apoptosis profiles of untreated MCF-7 cells (a) and MCF-7 cells treated with IC50 values of silymarin (b) and silymarin-loaded SLN (c) for 24 h. On the apoptosis profiles of untreated MCF-7 cells (a) were detected 98.19% live and 1.81% dead cells. In silymarin treated MCF-7 cells (b) the percentage of live cells was 75.76 and 13.73% and 9.90% of these cells were in early and late apoptotic stage, respectively. 0.61% of dead cells were detected in this group of cells. Early apoptotic and late apoptotic cells of this group were 6.21% and 19.61%, respectively. Live cells percentage in silymarin-loaded SLN treated MCF-7 cells (c) was detected as 64.74%. Early apoptotic and late apoptotic cell percentages were 19.37 and 14.95 for this cell group.