Anticancer and antimicrobial peptides from medicinal plants of Borneo island in Sarawak

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The interest in drug discovery from plants-based metabolites has been of interests to researchers, especially for health well-being and for therapeutic reasons. The work described here was to explore the in vitro anticancer and antimicrobial peptides from six traditional medicinal plants commonly used in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Proteins were extracted from plants with a common protein extraction buffer. Evaluation for in vitro anticancer activity was done against normal and carcinomas nasopharyngeal cell line; NP69 and HK-1 respectively by using established MTT microtiter plate assays. Antimicrobial activity was tested against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, a Gram-positive and Gram-negative respectively, by agar well diffusion method. The plant extracts were fractionated and in vitro anticancer activity of the fractionated extracts were repeated. Piper sarmentosum and Orthosiphon aristatus extracts did not show any distinguishable inhibition towards nasopharyngeal cell line with the cell viability above 90%. The antimicrobial activity was exhibited by P. sarmentosum, Piper betle and Senna alata extract with more than 1 mm inhibition zones observed. Also, fraction 1 from fractionated P. sarmentosum extracts and fraction 2 from fractionated O. aristatus extracts showed noticeable inhibition towards carcinomas nasopharyngeal cell line with the cell viability below 80%. These results showed that local medicinal plants could be promising sources of natural products with potential anticancer and antimicrobial activity. The results can be used as a guide for plants selection for further pharmacological and phytochemical investigations.