Five herbs, Curcuma longa L., Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, Scutellaria barbata D. Don, Hedyotis diffusa Willd. and Solanum nigrum L., are often prescribed in the polyherbal formulas for cancer treatment by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners. We investigated whether we could identify important anticancer herbs used in TCM and carry out bioactivity-directed fractionation and isolation using in metastatic colon, cervical, liver, leukaemia and prostate cancer cells 1 . Characterisation of the anti-proliferative efficacy in cancer cells and low cytotoxicity to healthy cells were found to be associated with the anthraquinone and triterpenoid compounds.
Cellular pathways underlying this inhibitory effect of the anthraquinone and triterpenoid compounds in cell cycle, apoptosis and free radical scavenger assays employing prostate cancer cells with varying androgen receptor profiles will be presented. The anthraquinone and triterpenoid compounds induced accumulation of G0/G1 phase cells in prostate cancer cells. The presence of androgens did not rescue the androgen-sensitive AR+ prostate cancer cells from G0/G1 cell arrest or apoptosis. Together, our data will be useful in the validation of the clinical application of these herbs and the development of novel anticancer therapeutics. Development of follow-up lead compounds and characterisation of the cancer signalling pathways involved in different types of cancers will also be discussed.