Vol. 8, Issue 5 (2019)

Author(s):
Bhavna Dwivedi and Skand Kumar Mishra

Abstract:
Cancer is multifactorial disease and everyone looking for alternative therapeutic options to cure this. Withania somnifera is FDA approved nutraceutical and well reported as phytomedicine. In this study we investigated the efficacy of methanolic and aqueous leaf extract of this plant on cell proliferation, cell cycle and cell death in transformed HeLa cells. Well known model of cancer cell line were cultured in standard laboratory condition and treated with varied concentration of both methanolic and aquous extracts of the plant leaves. Using MTT assay cell viability of these cells was found significantly affected. The inhibitory concentration was found to be 30-50 μg/ml for different fractions. We further tested IC50 concentration of the plant extracts on the HeLa cells and assessed the uptake of 7-AAD dye to check cell death. Dead cell were significantly increased in treated cell. It was observed that fraction-A, B, C induced significant cell death 35%, 37.5% and 21% respectively with compare to untreated control. Further, we assessed the effect of extracts on cell cycle using flow cytometry of propidium iodide stained cells. HeLa cells showed significant increase in G0 phase, decrease in G1 phase and arrested in S/G2/M phase with compare to control. Findings of our study demonstrate that W. somnifera extracts are rich in phytoactive component with therapeutic potential against cancerous cells. Both methanolic and aquoues extract are equally effective, and expected to possess similar component and exist similar mechanism which has to be confirmed in further studies.