Pharmacognostical investigations on arum italicum miller

Recently, cancer that is characterized by unregulated cell proliferation is the second major cause of deaths after cardiovascular diseases. In cancer treatment, anticancer drugs used in therapy kill not only cancer cells but also healthy human cells. So, it is still popular to investigate new cytotoxic compounds because of the narrow therapeutic index and the complexity of cancer mechanisms. Therefore, compounds from natural sources are very important to research for their promising anticancer activities. Arum italicum Miller known as 'yılan yastığı' in Turkey is a remarkable plant due to its rhizomes traditional use as anticancer agent. Although whole parts are toxic, the plant is used as food. In the literature, it is reported that the decoction of rhizomes is used to treat cancer and women disorders, as well sliced rhizomes with honey are used for peptic ulcer and cancer in traditional medicine. In phytochemical studies, biologically active secondary metabolites such as saponins, alkaloids, steroidal compounds, neolignan and furan-type lignans are identified from A. italicum. Based on this knowledge, the extract obtained from rhizomes were fractionated by 'biological activity guided fractionation' method and MCF-7 breast and A549 non-small lung cancer cell lines were used to screen cytotoxic activity. To explain possible cytotoxicity mechanisms, the inhibition of DNA synthesis and apoptosis were investigated. At the same time, the possible antioxidant, anticholinesterases and anti-LOX activities were evaluated by in vitro. When the results were compared, E2 subfraction showed noticable cytotoxic activity against A549 cell lines comparable to the positive control, mitoxantrone. E3 and E6 subfractions showed good cytotoxic activities against both cancer cell lines. These three subfractions at different concentrations inhibited DNA synthases on both cancer cells and showed apoptotic effects. There were no noticable results found at the other biological activities. The chemical composition of each subfraction was determined by LC/MS-MS system. Secondary metabolites such as hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives, lignan derivatives, phenolic amines, oxylipins were identified in the subfractions.