Journal of Clinical Trials
Open Access

Anti-cancer and phytochemical screening of Asparagus africanus extracts

International Conference on Clinical Trials

July 27-29, 2015 Orlando-FL, USA

O D Okolie, S S Mashele and I T Maduna

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Clin Trials

Abstract :

The screening for active compounds from plants leads to the discovery of new medicinal drugs which have efficient protection
and treatment roles against various diseases including cancer. In this study, methanol and dichloromethane extracts from
the roots of Asparagus africanus Lam. were tested against breast (MCF7), colon (HCT116) and prostate (PC3) cancer cell
lines. Etoposide was used as a positive control. Total growth inhibition (TGI) of the cancer cells using the sulforhodamine B
assay was determined to classify the extracts as inactive, weak, moderate or potent. And also the phytochemical properties of
this plant were examined using quantitative method. The plant possesses some phytochemical constituents that show positive
result, which give more questions to this research work. A. africanus extracts were inactive (TGI>50 μg/ml) against all the cell
lines. The phytochemical screening of this plant shows positive result, which thereby raise questions for this plant to be tested
with other type of cancer cell lines.However these results were inconclusive because the positive control was also inactive. More
screening of the extracts with other cell lines and other positive standards may produce different results.