Abstract

Forty herbal drugs which are described to have potential antitumor activity were solvent-fractionated with petroleum ether, ether and ethyl acetate in sequence. The cytotoxic activity was mostly shown in the ether fraction(40.54%) and petroleum ether fraction (35.15%), but scarcely in the water phase (10.8%), meaning that most of the active components had less polar property. Twenty-seven percent of the drugs tested were active, which is higher value than 10.4% of the random sampled drugs The drugs possessing the $ED_{50}$ values less than $10{mu}g/ml$ were the roots of Lithospermum erythrorhizon, Curcuma domestica, Salvia miltiorrhiza, Astragalus membraneceus and Scutellaria indica, the leaves of Panax ginseng, S. indica and Liriodendron tulipifera, the barks of Picrasma ailanthoides and Rhus vernifera, the herbs of Agrimonia pilosa and Siegesbeckia pubescens the seeds of Tricosanthes kirilowii, P. ailanthoides, and the stem of P. ginseng.

Keywords

• Herbal drugs;
• L1210 cell;
• cytotoxicity