Research Article Cytotoxic Activities against Breast Cancer Cells of Local Justicia gendarussa Crude Extracts

Copyright © 2014 Zahidah Ayob et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Justicia gendarussa methanolic leaf extracts from five different locations in the Southern region of Peninsular Malaysia and two flavonoids, kaempferol and naringenin, were tested for cytotoxic activity. Kaempferol and naringenin were two flavonoids detected in leaf extracts using gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID). The results indicated that highest concentrations of kaempferol and naringenin were detected in leaves extracted from Mersing with 1591.80mg/kg and 444.35mg/kg, respectively. Positive correlationswere observed between kaempferol and naringenin concentrations in all leaf extracts analysedwith the Pearson method. The effects of kaempferol and naringenin from leaf extracts were examined on breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468) using MTT assay. Leaf extract from Mersing showed high cytotoxicity against MDA-MB-468 and MDA-MB-231 with I