Anticancer evaluation of some medicinal plants from the Carpathian region Octavian Tudorel Olaru 1, Maryna Van de Venter 2, Trevor Koekemoer 2, Luanne Venables 2, George Mihai Niţulescu 1 1 “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania 2 “Nelson Mandela” Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa Objectives Although cancer therapy has developed significantly in the past two decades, numerous compounds being discovered, there is a considerable scientific interest in the continuing discovery of new antitumor agents from new plant sources. The aim of the present study was the assessment of cytotoxicity on human cancer cell lines of various extracts from plant species from the Carpathian region, in order to discover new sources of anticancer compounds. The study was focused on six plant species from the following genera: Fallopia – F. dumetorum, F. convolvulus, F. aubertii (Polygonaceae), Stellaria – S. media (Caryophyllaceae) and Corydalis – C. cava, C. solida (Papaveraceae). Best of our knowledge, these plant species are insufficiently researched for the atitumor activity. Material and methods Aqueous and ethanolic extracts from different parts of the plant species were prepared. The cytotoxicity screening was performed using MTT assay against human tumour cancer cell lines MCF7 (breast cancer), Caco-2 (colon carcinoma) and HeLa (cervical cancer). The cell lines were exposed to plant extracts concentration in the range of 3 to 300 µg/mL, and the IC50 were calculated. Results The plant extracts from Fallopia species showed to have cytotoxic activity against HeLa and Caco-2 cells in a dose- dependent manner, but not against MCF7 breast cancer cells. Stellaria and Corydalis extracts showed to exhibit cytotoxicity against HeLa and Caco-2 cancer cells, but dose dependence was not evident. Conclusions Fallopia extracts showed to have the highest cytotoxicity and can represent promising anticancer sources. However, further studies of the active extracts are necessary in order to distinguish the selectivity and the mechanisms involved. Fig 1. A - Corydalis solida, B - Fallopia dumetorum, C – Fallopia convolvulus, D - Stellaria media Fig 2. Screening results of Fallopia extracts at various concentrations as indicated using HeLa (A), MCF7 (B) and Caco-2 (C) cells. Error bars represent standard deviation of triplicate values. B CD A BCA References 1. Pan L, Chai HB, Kinghorn AD. (2012) Discovery of new anticancer agents from higher plants. Front Biosci (Schol Ed), 4: Sowemimo A, van de Venter M, Baatjies L, Koekemoer T. (2009) Cytotoxic activity of selected Nigerian plants. African Journal of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 6(4): Olaru OT, Anghel AI, Istudor V, Ancuceanu RA, Dinu M. (2013) Contributions to the pharmacognostical and phytobiological study of Fallopia aubertii (L. Henry) Holub. (Polygonaceae). Farmacia, 61(5): Wangchuk P, Keller PA, Pyne SG, Willis AC, Kamchonwongpaisan S. (2012) Benzylisoquinoline alkaloids from the tubers of Corydalis ternata and their cytotoxicity. J Ethnopharmacol. 143(1): Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the financial support offered by the National Authority for Scientific Research of Romania, through UEFISCDI.