PRELIMINARY PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING AND QUALITATIVE ANTICANCER ACTIVITY OF TECTONA GRANDIS AND ANNONA SQUAMOSA ON HELA CELL LINE

Tectona grandis and Annona squamosa are two medicinal plants of Lamiaceae and Annonaceae families respectively. Both of them are traditionally used to treat various diseases. As cancer is a life-threatening disease and cervical cancer is one of the most dangerous types of cancer, currently researchers’ goal is to investigate natural sources of anticancer agents. The objective of the present research is to investigate the preliminary phytochemicals and qualitative anticancer activity of the ethanolic leaves extracts of these two plants. Standard methods of phytochemical scrrening were employed to identify the secondary metabolites including carbohydrates, glycosides, saponins, steroids, flavonoids, tannins, phenols, coumarins, resins, and alkaloids. Besides, qualitative anticancer activity on HeLa cell line was investigated for these two plants from Centre for Advanced Research in Science (CARS), Dhaka, Bangladesh, using their standard procedure. Preliminary phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of steroids, tannin and alkaloids in the ethanolic extract of leaves of Tectona grandis and it is revealed that carbohydrates, glycosides, steroids, tannins, alkaloids, flavonoids, phenolic compounds, and coumarins were present in the extract of Annona squamosa. After 48 hours of administration of the extracts, Tectona grandis was found to inhibit 95% cell growth of HeLa cells whereas Annona squamosa was found to inhibit 80-90% of HeLa cells. As Tectona grandis is found to exert more potent anticancer activity, the future prospect of this research is to conduct in-vivo assessments, followed by the identification and isolation of the active anticancer agents.