Cytotoxicity effects of typhonium flagelliforme and clinacanthus nutans on breast cancer cells

Abstract

Cancers are diseases that can cause death and breast cancer is one of the prevalence cancers. Conventional treatments have been used to treat cancer. However, these treatments produced inefficient effects and low survival rate. Therefore, most cancer patients began to consume complementary and utilized alternative treatments to alleviate their pain. This study is to identify the cytotoxicity effect of methanolic leaves extract Typhonium flagelliforme and Clinacanthus nutans on breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231). MTT assay has been used to determine the cytotoxicity effect of both plants on MDA-MB-231 cells and CHO cells (non-cancerous cell), which acted as the positive control cells. Result revealed that T. flagelliforme extract has shown higher cytotoxic effect on MDA-MB-231cells (IC50: 0.11 mg/mL) compared to C. nutans extract (IC50: 0.17 mg/mL). Then, the IC50 values of T. flagelliforme and C. nutans extract on CHO cells were 0.10 mg/mL and 0.24 mg/mL respectively. Based on these results, T. flagelliforme represented higher toxicity effect on CHO compared to the MDA-MB-231 cells. Thus, in future CHO cell (as a positive control) can be replaced with a normal breast cell line such as HCC1395 (epithelial mammary duct of normal breast cells) to understand clearly the toxicity effect of T. flagelliforme extract towards the normal breast cell. Moreover, identification of potential compounds that can inhibit MDA-MB-231 cells growth is also important for future research.