Anti cancerous effect of bioactive compounds derived from the aqueous extract of Seaweed Laurencia karachiana Bibi

Cancer is one of the major non-communicable disease affecting 18 million patients worldwide. It is reported to be the second most lethal disease in the world. Natural products are attractive sources for the development of new medicinal and therapeutic agents for their cell selective and fewer adverse effects. Natural origins are the main origins for approved drugs in the treatment of cancer, occupying almost 60%. In this context, it is significant to develop natural products in cancer treatment. A large number of studies have uncovered the anti-cancer activities of seaweeds and numerous seaweed-derived compounds have been shown to be effective through multiple mechanisms such as the inhibition of cancer cell growth, invasiveness and metastasis as well as by the induction of apoptosis in cancer cells. Therefore, the present investigation undertakes to explore the anticancer activity of Laurencia karachiana Bibi. The A549 (Human lung adenocarcinoma cell line) and L929 (Mouse embryo fibroblast cell line) were purchased from NCCS, Pune, India. MTT assay was conducted to find out the antioxidant and anti-cancerous activity. The aqueous extract of L. karachiana shows a concentration dependent anti-oxidant activity and is cytotoxic in nature on human lung cancer (A549) cells with IC50 value of 56.85 μg/ml and non-cytotoxic in nature on mouse embryo fibroblast (L929) cells with IC50 value of 219.05 μg/ml. The MTT assay results suggest that the given test compound exhibited cytotoxic and anti-cancer activity against human lung cancer cells without affecting any toxic potency on normal mouse fibroblast cells and further studies have to be conducted to determine the molecular mechanism behind cytotoxicity properties of the test compound.