Bioactivity Guided Fractionation and Elucidation of Anticancer Properties of Madhuca longifolia Leaf Extracts

Abstract

One of the leading causes of mortality in the globe is cancer. Cancer is a primary reason of death, with approximately 19.3 million novel cases expected to be diagnosed globally in 2022. The use of naturally generated anticancer chemicals must be developed as an alternative safe, affordable, and practical method for cancer treatment as traditional cancer medicines have failed to meet the requirements for successful cancer therapy. Phytochemicals and herbal extracts from various plants have been shown to have powerful chemopreventive properties. In this work, we studied the pharmacognostical and anticancer activity of the leaves of Madhuca longifolia. Aqueous, hydroalcoholic and ethanolic extracts of plants M. longifolia shows considerable movement beside breast cancer cell line MCF-7. The pharmacognostical study of leaves of M. longifolia shows existence of phenolic compounds, steroids, glycosides, saponins, alkaloids, flavonoids, amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, and triterpenoids. The cytotoxicity of cancer cells has been linked to the induction of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). The IC50 values of ethyl acetate fractions of ML is (14.37 μg/mL) and n-butanol fraction of ML (19.58 μg/mL) showed good activity which is compared with the standard drug tamoxifen (4.59 μg/mL). From the study, we concluded that the leaves of the plant M. longifolia show significant anticancer activity.