Somchai Sriwiriyajan1,
Thippawan Ninpesh1,
Yaowapa Sukpondma2,
Tapanawan Nasomyon1,
Potchanapond Graidist1,3 
For correspondence:- Potchanapond Graidist Email: gpotchan@medicine.psu.ac.th Tel:+6674451184
Received: 4 September 2013 Accepted: 28 March 2014 Published: 26 June 2014
Citation: Sriwiriyajan S, Ninpesh T, Sukpondma Y, Nasomyon T, Graidist P. Cytotoxicity Screening of Plants of Genus Piper in Breast Cancer Cell Lines. Trop J Pharm Res 2014; 13(6):921-928 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v13i6.14
© 2014 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..
Purpose: To examine whether seven species of plants of genus Piper possess anti-cancer effects.
Methods: One normal breast and three breast cancer cell lines were used to test cytotoxic effects over a period of 72 h using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. The dried plants were extracted with methanol and dichloromethane, and the effective extract isolated by crystallization, acid/base extraction and column chromatography techniques. Fragmented DNA was purified by phenol/chloroform/isoamyl alcohol.
Results: Methanol and dichloromethane extracts of Piper retrofractum, Piper betle, especially Piper nigrum, exhibited strong effect on MDA-MB-468. When the crude extract of P. nigrum was then separated by column chromatography, fraction D showed activity against both MCF-7 and MDA-MB-468 cells. Fraction DE that was isolated from D demonstrated a highly cytotoxic effect with IC50 values of 8.33 ± 1.27 and 7.48 ± 0.57 µg/ml on MCF-7 and MDA-MB-468 cells, respectively. Furthermore, fraction DF exhibited a strong cytotoxic effect only on MCF-7 with IC50 value of 6.51 ± 0.39 µg/ml. DNA smears of MCF-7 and MDA-MB-468 cells treated with fraction DE and DF were observed within 7 days.
Conclusions: These results indicate that the compounds isolated from P. nigrum, viz, DE and DF, have cytotoxic effect on breast cancer cell lines. These fractions could be promising agent for breast cancer treatment. Further studies on the isolation, structural and mechanism elucidation of the active compound are still needed being carried out.
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