Abstract 3802: Selective cytotoxicty and mechanism of Myrothamnus flabellifolius, an edible medicinal plant, on acute myeloid leukemia cells

Proceedings: AACR 106th Annual Meeting 2015; April 18-22, 2015; Philadelphia, PA Current therapies for acute myeloid leukemia involve chemotherapy and radiation, which cause damage to normal and cancerous cells. There is a dire need to discover novel drugs that target only cancer cells. Myrothamnus flabellifolius is a South African resurrection plant known for its anti-viral, anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory properties. Human myeloid leukemia (HL-60) cells and normal (TK-6) lymphocytes were treated with the methanolic extract of M. flabellifolius. Cancer cells treated with extract depicted a significant reduction in viability as compared to normal cells. The first part of this project involved fractionation of the methanolic extract using HPLC and testing each fraction on the normal and leukemic cell lines to find a fraction that selectively killed the cancer cells. A phytochemical analysis was also conducted for characterization of the anticancer compounds. In terms of mechanism, the loss in HL-60 viability was accompanied by the induction of caspase dependent apoptosis by way of caspase-7 cleavage. Heat shock proteins are molecular chaperones that aid in protein reassembly under stressful conditions and protect cells from apoptosis. TK-6 cells express heat shock protein 70 at a high level while HL-60 cells do not express the protein under normal conditions. The expression of HSP70 exhibits a positive correlation with the viability of cells post treatment with extract, indicating that this vital protein plays an important role in the survival of cells post treatment with M. flabellifolius extract. Citation Format: Abeer Badiab, Jasjit Dhillon, Fizal Nabbie, Bela Peethambaran. Selective cytotoxicty and mechanism of Myrothamnus flabellifolius, an edible medicinal plant, on acute myeloid leukemia cells. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 3802. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-3802