Cytotoxic Potential of fungal extracts against A549 cell line and its potential in drug development

Abstract

The need of new anticancer drugs having high efficiency & less toxicity for lung cancer has increased the exploration of natural sources. The discovery of many important anticancer drugs from endophytic fungi has increased research work on endophytic fungi to explore new anticancer agents. In the present study, 65 endophytic fungal cultures were subjected to culture filtrate production in synthetic medium, which were then screened for antitumor activity. Primary screening of all the culture filtrates was performed by using Antitumor Potato Disc Assay and 10 fungal cultures possessing significant antitumor activity were selected for further study. Bioactive residues as well as their aqueous fractions were screened for cytotoxicity employing in vitro cell culture method on A549 lung cancer cell line. The aqueous fraction of #1048AMSTITYEL was showing significant level of percentage cytotoxicity and it was found to be 96%. Although the % age cytotoxicity of #1048AMSTITYEL was comparable to that of Vinblastine but the MIC of selected culture was very high i.e. 0.5 mg. The IC50 of bioactive residue of #1048AMSTITYEL was found to 17.5 mg/ml. The identification of selected culture was done using molecular and classical tools. #1048AMSTITYEL was tentatively identified as Lasiodiplodia sp. Further purification and characterization of the probable anticancer compound along with identification of the culture upto species level is warranted for therapeutic usage as anticancer drug.