In-vitro comparative study of cytotoxic and thrombolytic effects of methanolic extract of Cissus pentagona and Thunbergia grandiflora (Roxb.) leaves

Abstract

Objective: To compare cytotoxic and thrombolytic activity of crude methanolic extract of Cissus pentagona (C. pentagona) and Thunbergia grandiflora Roxb. (T. grandiflora) leaves. Methods: The screening of cytotoxic activity was done by using brine shrimp lethality bioassay while the thrombolytic activity was evaluated by using the in vitro clot lysis model. In brief, venous blood from five healthy volunteers was allowed to form clots which were weighed and treated with the tested plant materials to disrupt the clots. Weight of clot before and after treatment provided a percentage of clot lysis and the results with streptokinase as positive control and water as negative control were compared. Results: Moderate cytotoxicity was found for both methanol extracts, and it was compared with the standard drug vincristine sulfate in the brine shrimp bioassay. In the present study, the LC50 values of the methanol crude extract of C. pentagona as well as T. grandiflora and vincristine sulfate were 291.33, 243.37 and 12.59 μg/mL, respectively. In thrombolytic study, it was found that C. pentagona and T. grandiflora showed (24.27 ± 2.61)% and (19.56 ± 2.98)% of clot lysis, respectively. Among the herbs studied, C. pentagona showed very significant (P < 0.001) percentage of clot lysis than T. grandiflora, compared with reference drug streptokinase ((63.54 ± 2.61)%). Conclusions: The results of the study demonstrated that the leaf of the plants contains preliminary cytotoxic effect on brine shrimp and promising thrombolytic activity in vitro when it is tested on human blood. However, further study is needed to evaluate its potential as a