ABSTRACT:
Marine environment acts as a rich resource of biological diversity producing prospective novel metabolites from the organisms present in the marine environment. Novel bioactive compounds have been extensively studied from Echinoderms mainly from sea stars procuring compounds likes saponins, steroidal glycosides exhibiting in vitro cytotoxicity comparable to or better than those of the potent anticancer drug. The current study was done to explore the cytotoxic activity of sea star Stellaster equestris on PA1 cell lines. The samples were collected and a sequential extraction by using various solvents hexane, dichloromethane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol were utilized for the extraction from the sea star Stellaster equestris. The extracts of sea star Stellaster equestris was assayed for cytotoxicity against Human Ovarian teratocarcinoma cell line PA 1 evaluated through MTT assay. The IC50 value was 35 µg /ml for the chloroform and the methanolic extracts which seems to induce a potent cytotoxic activity against the PA1 cell when compared with other extract. Acridine orange and propidium iodide staining of PA 1 cells revealed that majority of cells were in the apoptotic cell death mode. Apoptosis was induced due to the exposure of various doses of extracts in which the chloroform extract was found to be active to the PA1 cells hence the apoptotic percentage of the cells were comparatively high when compared with the other extract.