Momordica charantia and Cisplatin Treatment Increase the Cytotoxic Effects on Acute Leukemia Cells

Abstract

Abstract Chemotherapy was designed to target specific proteins by either upregulating or downregulating specific cellular pathways to induce apoptosis and stop cell proliferation of cancerous cells. However, a patient’s cancer cells are known to mutate and potentially develop resistance the cytotoxic mechanisms of these chemotherapy drugs. In addition, high dosages of chemotherapy drugs results in harmful side effects to the patients. As a result, researchers have been searching for ways to reduce drug dosages but maintain chemotherapeutic drugs killing efficiency. Bitter Melon (Momordica charantia) extract is considered a potential anti-cancer agent due to its antitumor and anti-inflammatory properties. The objective of this study is to examine the anti-cancer effects of bitter melon extract (BME) and to show an increased cytotoxicity of acute T-cell leukemia (Jurkat) treated with both cisplatin and BME. The results have shown that BME, when introduced at a 1% concentration, decreased the viability of Jurkat cells by an average of 12% (P-value 0.02). A high dosage treatment of Cisplatin (10μM) and a 1.5% concentration of BME decreased cell viability by 75% percent (P ≤ 0.05) when compared to the control group. At a low dose treatment of cisplatin (5μM), a 1.5% concentration of BME decreased the cell viability by 58.2% (P-value = 0.005). Our results indicate that a combination of these two compounds may help reduce to the need to use high dosages of cisplatin.