Abstract

Herbal medicines have received much attention as a source of new anticancer drugs. However, scientific studies have been conducted to a limited extent with few medicinal plants. This study investigates the cytotoxic activity of some Nigerian medicinal plants used locally in the treatment of cancer. The ethanolic extracts of five plants were evaluated using the MTT assay on the HT29 and MCF-7 cell lines. Sapium ellipticum leaves showed a greater cytotoxic activity than Combretum paniculatum, Celosia trigyna, Drymaria cordataand Cyathula prostata and it was comparable to the activity of the reference compound Cisplatin in the MCF-7 cell line. In the HT29 cell line, all the plants showed less than 50% activity at 500 µg/ml. The results showed that Sapium exhibited a greater cytotoxic activity than all the plants tested and this provides scientific evidence to support the traditional use of the plant.

Key words: Sapium, traditional medicine, cytotoxicity, cancer, cisplatin.