EVALUATION OF ANTICANCER ACTIVITY AND MECHANISTIC INVESTIGATION OF CUCUMIS TRIGONUS ROXB FRUIT

Abstract

An attempt has been made to study the in vitro and in vivo anticancer activity of differentextracts of the fruits of Cucumis trigonus, a herb belonging to the family Cucurbitaceae. The five extracts(Pet. Ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, methanol and water) were selected for the activity. In vitrocytotoxicity studies were carried of extracts on seven cancer and two normal cell lines out with MTT and SRB. Thecytotoxicity was performed on these 10 fractions and fraction 7 andamp; 8 showed CTC 50 at 0.073 mg/ml and0.080 mg/ml respectively against A- 549. The re-column chromatography of these two compoundsproduced two individual steroid triterpenes viz., compound A and compound B.The compounds were further evaluated for their mechanism of cytotoxic activity.Antiproliferative activity of triterpene fraction of cucumis trigonus(TF 25 CT) in cancer cell line wasaccessed by cell viability assay (MTT and SRB). TF 25 CT showed dose dependent inhibition of cellproliferation of cancer cells. The antiproliferative effect of TF 25 CT was also associated with induction ofapoptosis as well as morphology changes and DNA fragment. The morphology of Apoptosis nuclei wasquantified using Hoechst stating and PI fragmentation. The degree of DNA fragmentation was analyzedby using agarose gel electrophoresis. The observations indicate that induced apoptotic- liked inmorphological changes such as cell shrinkage and blebbing. The effect of TF 25 CT on dynamics of individual microtubule in two living human cancer cell line was studied. Taken together the kinesis protein inhibitor represents an importedcompound for further investigate as novel anticancer therapeutics.The treatment with active chloroform extract obtained from Cucumis trigonus was found to reduce thetumor and associated symptoms in DLA induced ascites tumor bearing mouse.In conclusion, our results indicate that the chloroform extract of fruits of Cucumis trigonus Roxb. Andcompounds (compound A and compound B) may be promising candidates for antitumor drugdevelopment.