Paper Title
The Potential of Seaweed as a Source for Cancer Natural Medicine
Abstract
More than 60% of cancer deaths occurred in low and middle income countries, such as Indo-nesia; which lack the
medical resources and health systems to support the disease burden. Hence, utilization of natural based products would
provide promising insights towards sup-pressing cancer incidence rate. Macroalgae are a promising group to furnish various
bioactive compounds and Indonesia is endowed with abundance of macroalgae. However, information regarding their
bioactive properties and pharmaceutical potentials are largely unexplored. This study evaluates the cytotoxicity and anti
proliferative activity of macroalgae sargassum crassifolium (SC), Gelidium latifolium (GL), Laurencia elata (LE), and
Sargassum polycystum (SP) ethanol extracts collected from Indonesian coastal area. GL macroalgae demonstrated most
significant cytotoxicity in HeLa cells with EC50 of 144.42±12.08 μg/mL. This was also supported by fluorescence imaging
which revealed only GL ethanol extracts potentially induces cellular DNA damage. Cytotoxic activity of GL is assumed to
induce apoptosis in HeLa cells as analyzed with DNA fragmentation assay. Cells treated with other macroalge extracts were
seen to show significant growth inhibition effects, but not to the point of cell death through apoptosis. Current results show
GL macroalgae possesses more promising bio-active properties, cytotoxic and anti proliferative activity compared to other
macroalgae spe-cies. Further advanced studies would be reasonable for GL potential uses in pharmaceutical industries.
Keywords – Anti proliferative, cancer, cytotoxicity, macroalgae