ANTI-PROLIFERATIVE ACTIVITY OF COMMELINA BENGHALESIS A MEDICINAL PLANT AGAINST WIL-2 NS LYMPHOCYTES

Abstract

There are as yet no extremely effective drugs to treat most cancers and many cancer treatments are very expensive. Cancer prevention and treatment using traditional remedies have attracted increasing interest. This study characterizes antiproliferation activity of indigenous traditional medicinal plant which was used for many years to treat skin ulcers and skin lumps in Northern parts of Limpopo Province, RSA. The plant was exhaustively extracted with acetone at room temperature for 10 hours and the resulting crude was sub-fractioned with n-hexane to obtain fraction 1 (F1) and with dichloromethane to obtain fraction 2 (F2). We observed here that both fractions (F1 and F2) inhibited the growth of Wil-2 NS cancer cells. Treatment of Wil-2 NS cells with these fractions (0 – 200μg/ml) resulted in dose- and time-depended inhibition of cell proliferation. The inhibition of proliferation was associated with apoptosis as determined by Acridine-orange and ethidium bromide dual stain (AES dual stain) and pictures from light microscope. Their morphology related to apoptosis was characterized by cell shrinkage and chromatin condensation. The obtained data suggest that fractions of indigenous medicinal plant have anti-proliferation activity on this cancer cells. A further experiment on whether it is through apoptosis or other factors that fractions exert its direct antiproliferation effects requires further investigations.