The cytotoxic effect of red and green Malaysian sea weeds against liver cancer cell lines (HepG2) / Syuhada Mohd Jalil

In recent years, generally about 30,000 new compounds from marine natural products have been explored and identified. This number of findings reflected the great potential of marine natural products as a source of novel chemicals classes. Due to the efficacy limitation of the available anticancer drugs in liver cancer treatment, there is an urge to seek new candidate for alternatives drugs. In search for new source of active metabolites, marine endophytic fungi isolated from seaweeds were chosen to be further studied. Hence, in this study, three marine endophytic fungi (ED 1, ED2 and UF) isolated from red (Acanthophora spicifera (M. Vahl) Borgesen) and green Malaysian seaweeds ( Chaetomorpha minima F. S Collins & Hervey 1917) were grown on two types of media, PDA with 1 % and 3% of artificial sea salt (PDA 1 % and PDA 3%). Marine endophytic fungi extracts were investigated for their cytotoxic effect against HepG2 cells by using MIT assay. In this presence study, the lowest IC50 values were observed at 72 hours incubation times. Extracts with the IC5o values less than 50µg/ml [UF 1 % (16.5± l.5µg/ml), EDI 1 % (36 ± 16.00µg/ml) and UF 3% (42.5± 12.5µg/ml)] were considered to have promising cytotoxic activity. Only one extract [UF 1 % % (16.5± l.5µg/ml)] showed active cytotoxic activity whereas two extracts [(EDI 1 % (36 ± 16.00µg/ml) and UF 3% (42.5± 12.5µg/ml)] had moderate cytotoxic activity. As for salinity, endophytic fungi media supplemented with 1 % artificial sea salt was sufficient in providing cytotoxic effect against HepG2 cells as compared to 3%. Therefore, the cytotoxic effects exhibited by these three extracts against HepG2 cells could be considered as suitable candidates for further studies as anticancer agents.