Apoptosis Induction, Cell Cycle Arrest and in Vitro Anticancer Activity of Gonothalamin in a Cancer Cell Lines

Cancer is one of the major health problems worldwide and its current treatments have a number of undesiredadverse side effects. Natural compounds may reduce these. Currently, a few plant products are being used totreat cancer. In this study, goniothalamin, a natural occurring styryl-lactone extracted from Goniothalamusmacrophyllus, was investigated for cytotoxic properties against cervical cancer (HeLa), breast carcinoma(MCF-7) and colon cancer (HT29) cells as well as normal mouse fibroblast (3T3) using MTT assay. Fluorescencemicroscopy showed that GTN is able to induce apoptosis in HeLa cells in a time dependent manner. Flow cytometryfurther revealed HeLa cells treated with GTN to be arrested in the S phase. Phosphatidyl serine propertiespresent during apoptosis enable early detection of the apoptosis in the cells. Using annexin V/PI double stainingit could be shown that GTN induces early apoptosis on HeLa cells after 24, 48 and 72 h. It could be concludedthat goniothalamin showing a promising cytotoxicity effect against several cancer cell lines including cervicalcancer cells (HeLa) with apoptosis as the mode of cell death induced on HeLa cells by Goniothalamin was.