Anticancer Agents from Non-Edible Parts of Theobroma cacao

Abstract

In order to establish the medicinal properties as anticancer agents from the non-edible of cocoa plant parts, the studies on fresh of non-edible cocoa plant parts such as cocoa leaf (CL), cocoa bark (CB), cocoa husk (CH), cocoa shell unfermented (CSUF), cocoa shell fermented (CSF), cocoa root (CR), cocoa cherelle (CC) & cocoa pith (CP) were performed by extg. in methanol solvent, screening against various type of cancer cell lines, purified using bioassay guided fractionation and identified active compds. using gas chromatog.-mass spectrometry (GCMS). Results revealed that the cocoa leaf ext. presented the highest antiproliferative activity against breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) with IC50 value was 41.43 ± 3.26 μg/mL and selected for further purifn. using bioassay guided fractionation. The hexane partitioned fraction of cocoa leaf showed the highest anticancer activity with IC50 value about 66.7 ± 7.95 μg/mL. Hexane partitioned fraction was further purified using flash column chromatog. and divided into 3 steps such as fractionation-1, fractionation-2 and fractionation-3. Sample fraction II/F7 from fractionation-2 was selected for chem. characterization using GC-MS due to the highest anticancer cancer activity with IC50 value was 6.36 ± 0.71 μg/mL and generated 10 major active compds. with synergistic effect against MCF-7. Nine compds. were known compds. and one compd. was unknown compd. Theobroma cacao is still an underutilized plant and its bean has been used traditionally as source of food and medicine. The consumption of cocoa leaf as non-edible part could provide health benefits esp. to treat human cancer in the future. [on SciFinder(R)]