TITLE:
Acetone Extract of Dioscorea alata Inhibits Cell Proliferation in Cancer Cells
AUTHORS:
Kenroy Wallace, Helen Asemota, Wesley Gray
KEYWORDS:
Dioscorea alata, Acetone Extract, Anticancer Activity, White Yam
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.12 No.3,
March
17,
2021
ABSTRACT: Dioscorea spp., White Yam has been shown to exhibit a wide
range of nutritional and medicinal properties. However, the compounds
associated with its medicinal functions have not been fully examined. The
purpose of this study was to generate a chemoinformatic profile of the
bioactive compounds present in Dioscorea. alata (D. alata) and to
characterize their putative anti-cancer properties using prostate (DU145) and
lung (A549) cancer cells. Chemoinformatic profiling of D. alata resulted in five
bioactive extracts: hexane (DaJa-1), ether
(DaJa-2), acetone (DaJa-3), ethanol (DaJa-4) and water (DaJa-5) were generated.
The analytes present in the five bioactive extracts were dissolved in 0.1% DMSO
and their anti-cancer activity were determined. We observed that the acetone extract (DaJa3) was the only
extract capable of inducing greater than 90% cell death of DU 145 cell at 100 μg/mL. The order of growth
inhibition of the extracts in DU-145 cell is DaJa-3 (IC50, 31.45 μg/mL) >
DaJa-4 (IC50 60 μg/mL) > DaJa-1 (IC50 > 100 μg/mL) ≥ DaJa-2 (IC50 >
100 μg/mL) ≥ DaJa-5 (IC50 > 100 μg/mL). MTT cell viability, dye exclusion,
caspase activity and microscopic assessment of apoptotic cells demonstrated
that DaJa-3 displayed cytotoxicity to both lung and prostate cancer cells. The
A549 cells were more sensitive toward DaJa-3 with an IC50 value of
22.28 μg/mL (CI 28.42 to 36.63 μg/mL), compared to that of DU145 cells with an
IC50 value of 31.45 μg/mL (CI 27.58 to 35.86 μg/mL). It was also
observed that DaJa-3 induces differential anti-proliferative activity in the
cancer cells. The apoptotic response induced by DaJa-3 paralleled the level of
cell cytotoxicity observed in both cell lines. DaJa-3 induces G2 phase cell cycle arrest in DU145 cells but G1 arrest in A549 cells.
The level of key apoptotic regulator proteins was upregulated, suggested that DaJa-3 may be mediating its anti-cancer effect through activation
of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway. Altogether, our data indicates that DaJa-3 derived from a staple food source (white Yam) contains
unique active compounds that have specific biological properties that may
prevent certain types of cancer or specific types of cancer.