Curcuma zedoaria belonging to the family Zingiberaceae has been used in the traditional system of medicine in India and Southwest Asia in treating many human ailments and is found to possess many biological activities. The rationale of the present study was to isolate, identify, and characterize antitumour principles from the rhizomes of Curcuma zedoaria, to assess its cytotoxic effects on human and murine cancer cells, to determine its apoptosis inducing capacity in cancer cells, and to evaluate its tumour reducing properties in in vivo mice models. Isocurcumenol was characterized as the active compound by spectroscopy and was found to inhibit the proliferation of cancer cells without inducing significant toxicity to the normal cells. Fluorescent staining exhibited the morphological features of apoptosis in the compound-treated cancer cells. In vivo tumour reduction studies revealed that a dose of 35.7？mg/kg body weight significantly reduced the ascitic tumour in DLA-challenged mice and increased the lifespan with respect to untreated control mice. 1. Introduction Plants have been a source of medicine for thousands of years, and phytochemicals continue to play an essential role in medicine [1]. Several of the current chemotherapeutic drugs like vinblastine, methotrexate, taxol, and so forth, were first identified in plants. In developing countries, the practice of medicine still relies heavily on plant and herbal extracts for the treatment of human ailments. Dietary agents consist of a wide variety of biologically active compounds that are ubiquitous in plants, and many of them have been used as traditional medicines [2–4]. Some phytochemicals derived in spices and herbs as well as other plants possess substantial cancer preventive properties [5–10]. Plants of ginger family (Zingiberaceae) have been frequently and widely used as spices and in traditional systems of medicine practiced in many Asian countries, and their medicinal functions have been broadly discussed and accepted in many traditional recipes [11]. The Zingiberaceae plants contain a number of volatile and essential oils including terpenoids, phenylpropanoids, flavonoids, and sesquiterpenes, which has reported antitumour activity [12–14]. As plants of Zingiberaceae family are considered safe for human consumption, these species are excellent candidates for development of novel chemotherapeutics [15]. Traditionally, curcuma drugs called “Ukon” and “Gajutsu” in Japanese have been used in oketsu syndromes (caused by the obstruction of blood circulation) in Chinese medicine [16]. Various
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