Author(s): Boominathan P and CV Chittibabu

Abstract: Herbal medicines containing different alkaloids of medicinal plants are used for prevention and treatment of dreadful diseases such as cancer, HIV and tuberculosis. They include traditional medicines of ancient times and the present day standardized plant drugs are all herbal drugs. In the age of clinical medicines, the main challenge is drug resistance. So, multidrug resistance somehow hampers random use of clinical medicines anymore, resulting in the use of herbal medicines. Use of herbal medicines is cheaper due to its easy availability. Modern day medicines have already accepted herbalism as a form of alternative medicine. Clinical medicines however use many plant-derived metabolites in pharmaceutical drugs, for example- opium, aspirin, digitalis, quinine etc; but scope of using herbal medicines is further extended as it consists of many more unexplored herbals, minerals, fungal and algal products. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the anticancer activity of ethanol tuberous root extract of D. hamiltonii and roots of H. indicus on Hep G2 cells and cytotoxicity on Vero cells by MTT assay method. The maximum cell death of Vero cells by tuberous root extract of D. hamiltonii was 23.66±0.003% and that of H. indicus was 20.69±0.003% at 160 µg/mL concentration. The maximum cell death of HepG2 cells by tuberous root extract of D. hamiltonii was 76.58±0.005% and in the case of H. indicus it was 72.11±0.004% at 160 µg/mL concentration.