Investigating the antiangiogenic potential of Rumex vesicarius (humeidh), anticancer activity in cancer cell lines and assessment of developmental toxicity in zebrafish embryos

Recent trends in anticancer therapy is to use therapeutic agents which not only kill the cancer cell, but are less toxic to surrounding normal cells/tissue. One approach is to cut the nutrient supply to growing tumor cells, by blocking the formation of new blood vessels around the tumor. As the phytochemicals and botanical crude extracts have proven their efficacy as natural antiangiogenic agents with minimum toxicities, there is need to explore varieties of medicinal plants for novel antiangiogenic compounds. Rumex vesicarius L. (Humeidh), is an annual herbal plant with proven medicinal values. The antiangiogenic potential, and developmental toxicity of humeidh in experimental animal models has never been studied before. The crude extracts were prepared from the roots, stems, leaves and flowers of Rumex vesicarius L. in methanol, chloroform, ethyl acetate and n-hexane. The developmental toxicity screening in zebrafish embryos, has revealed that Rumex vesicarius was not toxic to zebrafish embryos. The chloroform stem extract showed significant level of antiangiogenic activity in zebrafish angiogenic assay on a dose dependent manner. Thirty five (35) bioactive compounds were identified by gas chromatography mass spectrophotometry (GC–MS) analysis in the stem extract of Rumex vesicarius. Propanoic acid, 2-[(trimethylsilyl)oxy]-, trimethylsilyl ester, Butane, 1,2,3-tris(trimethylsiloxy), and Butanedioic acid, bis(trimethylsilyl) ester were identified as major compound present in the stem of R. vasicarius. The anticancer activity of roots, stem, leaves and flowers crude extract was evaluated in human breast cancer (MCF7), human colon carcinoma (Lovo, and Caco-2), human hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) cell lines. Most of the crude extracts did not show significant level of cytotoxicity in tested cancer cells line, except, chloroform extract of stem which exhibited strong anticancer activity in all tested cancer cells with IC(50) values in micro molar range. Based on these results, it is recommended that formulation prepared from R. vesicarius can further be tested in clinical trials in order to explore its therapeutic potential as an effective and safe natural anticancer product.