Antioxidant and cytotoxic activity of stems of Smilax zeylanica in vitro

Medicinal plants commonly used against cancer in traditional medicine formulae in Sri Lanka

Cancer is a global burden. In low- and middle-income countries around 70% of deaths are due to cancer. For a number of years natural products have been a good source of agents for combatting cancer and plants have played a huge role in anti-cancer product development. For many centuries, indigenous cultures around the world have used traditional herbal medicine to treat a myriad of diseases including cancer. In Sri Lanka, a number of plants have been reported to have anti-cancer properties and some of the commonly used plants are described in this review with an account of their compounds and modes of action. Only a small number of the plants in Sri Lanka have been tested for their bioactivity and more research is required to determine their medicinal activity with the aim of developing novel drugs to fight this disease.

Capillary electrophoresis fingerprints combined with chemometric methods to evaluate the quality consistency and predict the antioxidant activity of Yinqiaojiedu tablet

The quality consistency of Yinqiaojiedu tablets (YQJDTs) was monitored by extracting their electrophoretic fingerprint and marker compound data that were obtained using capillary electrophoresis. To select the suitable background electrolyte, wing-shape method was proposed. A background electrolyte composed of 103.1 mM boric acid, 51.6 mM sodium borate, 9.8 mM disodium hydrogen phosphate, and 15.6 mM sodium dihydrogen phosphate was used to separate compounds. Under the optimized conditions, the content of three marker compounds was determined in 25 YQJDT samples. The capillary electrophoresis fingerprints were developed simultaneously, then 25 samples from two manufacturers were clearly divided into two clusters based on the principal component analysis. In fingerprint assessments, systematic quantified fingerprint method was adopted for integrative quality discrimination of YQJDTs from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives, by which the qualities of 25 samples were well differentiated. In addition, partial least squares model was established to explore fingerprint-efficacy relationship between the fingerprints and the antioxidant activities in vitro, providing clinically useful information for quality control. The proposed method was reliable and comprehensive, which could be used for a valuable reference to monitor the quality consistency of traditional Chinese medicines.