Studies of the biological activity of Cassia fistula

Abstract

Cancer has been the most dreadful disease from ages till now. However, with the passage of time it been more understood its mechanism, types, some causing factors, and way of its cell duplication. By the progress of science there are now more than one available method for treatment, diagnosis or prevention of cancer. But this progress did not reach till now cheap, fast and effective specific targeting treatment for all types or even one type. For this aim, the field of searching for alternative natural compounds extracted from plants to replace those expensive non effective targeting compounds has been wider and advanced. One of familiar plant families is Leguminosae specifically class of Cassia fistula plant. This type of plant has been examined to ensure its biological activity and by detecting and analysis it show anticancer activity against liver cancer cell line; hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2. C. fistula volatile oil extract was able to inhibit proliferation for HepG2 cancer cell lines at 3.05  0.08µg/ml. The methanolic and oil extracts of Cassia fistula showed good brine shrimp larvicidal activity with lethality concentration (LC 50) of 15 and 55 µg/mL, respectively. Finally using GC-MS, the essential oil compounds were identified, whereas 39 compounds produces and accounted for 90.46% of the total oil, the major compound was compound sulfurous acid; cyclohexyl-methyl octadecyl ester (21.62%).