Phytopharmacological Investigations of Bioactives from Symplocos Racemosa Bark with specific reference to Anticander Activity

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the one of the world s commonest cancer, ranking third with newlinevery high morbidity and mortality rates with poor prognosis. With the increasing incidence of newlineHCC globally, especially in China, Asia, Africa; therapeutic approaches for HCC are very limited newlinecurrently. Therefore, there is an urgent quest for improvement of therapeutic activity and newlineselectivity of anticancer agents or drug combinations from natural source with no or limited newlinetoxicity for developing cancer therapeutics. Considering the continuing need for effective newlineanticancer agents, medicinal plants play inexhaustible source of anticancer drugs in term of both newlinevariety and mechanism of action. Over 50% of anticancer drugs approved by United states Food newlineand Drug Administration, originated from natural resources, especially from terrestrial plants. newlineSymplocos racemosa Roxb. belongs to a unigeneric family Symplocaceae; is a small evergreen newlinetree; found commonly in the plains and hills of northern India and other Asian countries, up to a newlineheight of 1400 m. The bark of S. racemosa has many glycosides, terpenoids, steroids and newlineflavonoids with various pharmacological effects. The ethnobotanical literature indicates the newlineutility of the bark in liver complaints, bowel complaints such as diarrhoea, dysentery and dropsy, newlineskin diseases, ear/eye disease, uterine complaints, vaginal and menstrual disorders, tumors, fever, newlineulcers and scorpion-string bite. In Ayurveda pittaja arbuda and medoja arbuda tumors are newlinereported to be treated with bark of S. racemosa in combination with other drugs. These references newlineprovide the traditional backbone to our objectives to screen the chemoprevention and cytotoxic newlinepotential of bark of S. racemosa. So the aim of the study is to evaluate the anticancer potential of newlinebark of S. racemosa against the hepatocellular carcinoma using in vitro and in vivo method. newline