Cytotoxic Activities of Snow Lotus Filtrates Against Human Cancer Cell Lines and Origin of Active Factor(s)

Abstract

Snow Lotus (SL) filtrate was prepared by incubation of SL grains with pasteurized and unboiled 4% milk for 24 h at room temperature and tested on cultured human cancer cells, namely, human colon adenocarcinoma (HCA), HepG2, MCF-7 and compared with a normal mouse (NCTC clone 929) cell line. It was observed that this filtrate exhibited cytotoxic activities in HCA (LD50 16.6 µl/ml) and HepG2 (LD50 17.1 µl/ml) cells and to a lesser extent in MCF-7 (LD50 28.1 µl/ml) and normal mouse cells (LD50 24.3 µl/ml). Different SL filtrates were also prepared by incubation of grains with 2, 1 and 0% fat content milks. These filtrates exhibited moderate to high cytotoxic activities. Interestingly, the filtrate obtained from 2% milk showed significant differential cytotoxic activity in the range of 39 to 44% between human cancer and mouse cell lines. The cytotoxic studies were also carried out with filtrate of shorter incubation period, where no cytotoxic activity observed. Similarly, SL water filtrate was also inactive in all cell cultures. The origin of cytotoxic factor(s) in the filtrates is discussed.