CYTOTOXICITY AND ANTI-CANCER EFFECT OF MANGROVE CRAB (SCYLLA SERRATA) SOUP ON HUMAN LEUKEMIC JURKAT CELLS

Maizan Mohamed*, Nani Izreen Mohd Sani, Aziana Ismail and Noor Fatmawati Mokhtar

ABSTRACT

Cancer still remains an aggressive killer worldwide. There are various side effects caused by current cancer therapies especially in infants and pregnant women. Crab is rich in chitin, chitosan and selenium that have been shown to have an anti-cancer activity. This study was aimed to investigate in vitro anti-proliferative and anticancer effect of mangrove crab soup on Jurkat leukemic T-cell line. In this study, mangrove crab soup extract was assayed in-vitro for their anticancer properties with standard MTT colorimetric procedure and expression of leukemia marker gene in human leukemic jurkat T-cells using semi-quantitative RT-PCR on B2M gene. The results obtained from MTT assay showed that cytotoxicity effect was reduced significantly after 72 hours of exposure at the dose of more than 25% (v/v) and the reduction was in a dose and time-dependent manner with an inhibitory concentration of 50% cell population (IC50) at 35% (v/v). Gene expression study on B2M marker gene for myeloma cancer showed the significant reduction in the level of expression which is similar to the cells treated with cisplatin, the drug used in cancer treatment. The present results revealed that the mangrove crab soup could be a potential alternative agent for leukemia therapy.

Keywords: Cytotoxicity, Anti-cancer, Mangrove crab soup, Human leukemic cancer cells.