Plant materials as a potential source of antitumor agents

Abstract

Many medicinal plants are used around the world to create new medicinal products. The effectiveness of these products is associated with a complex synergistic interaction of various plant components. In this study, we investigated the extract cytotoxicity of the following five plant species belonging to the Agavaceae (Asparagaceae) family: Sansevieria cylindrical, S. trifasciata, Polianthes tuberosa, Yucca filamentosa, and Furcraea gigantea (var. watsoniana). The plant material was collected in different regions of Egypt. For each plant species, the half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) in relation to the human lung adenocarcinoma cell culture (A549) was determined with the help of the IC50 calculator. For the MTT test, we used aqueous solutions of the methanol extracts of S. cylindrical and S. trifasciata in the concentrations of 100, 200, 300, 500, 900, 1300, 1700, and 2000 ?g/mL, as well as P. tuberosa, Y. filamentosa, and F. gigantea in the concentrations of 10, 20, 50, 100, 300, 500, 1000, and 1500 μg/mL. We found that the extracts of S. trifasciata leaves and rhizomes cause no significant effect on the viability of A549 tumor cells in all the studied concentrations. The aqueous solutions of S. cylindrica leaves and rhizome methanol extracts of with increasing concentration reduced the survival of A549 tumor cells more than twice as compared with the control group. The lowest IC50 values were obtained for the extracts of P. tuberosa and F. gigantea leaves: 62.5 and 82 μg/mL, respectively. The results confirm anticarcinogenic potential of the extracts of P. tuberosa and F. gigantea leaves, which is important for development of new phytobiotechnologies aimed at the synthesis of effective medications based on the secondary metabolites of these plants.

Keywords

• cancer
• cytotoxicity
• plant extracts
• agavaceae (asparagaceae)