The seeds of Alpinia galangal seeds could be a potential source of healthy food for tumor prevention. - GreenMedInfo Summary

This study was carried out to isolate ingredients from the seeds of a Chinese spice (Alpinia galangal) and to evaluate their cytotoxic activity on cancer cell lines. Isolation and purification of the phytochemical constituents were conducted using silica gel, Sephadex LH-20 and ODS columns. After extraction using 95% ethanol, the total extracts were re-extracted, resulting in petroleum ether (PE), ethyl acetate (EA) and water fractions, respectively. Activity tests showed that the EA fraction exhibited obvious (p<0.05) protective effects on H2O2 damaged PC-12 cells at 20μg mL(-1), and showed much higher (p<0.05) cytotoxic activity on cancer cell lines than other fractions. Five compounds, 1'-S-1'-acetoxyeugenol acetate (), 1'-S-1'-acetoxychavicol acetate (), 2-propenal, 3-[4-(acetyloxy)-3-methoxyphenyl] (), isocoronarin D () and caryolane-1, 9β-diol (), were obtained from the EA fraction and identified by HPLC, UV, MS, and NMR spectroscopic analyses. Compounds and were isolated from A. galangal for the first time. Moreover, compounds , , and were the main active ingredients for inducing death of the tested cancer cells, and their IC50 values ranged from 60 to 90 μg mL(-1), indicating that these compounds possessed a wide anti-cancer capability. Therefore, A. galangal seeds could be a potential source of healthy food for tumor prevention.