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Kaempferia galanga included in the Zingiberaceae family is one of the potential medicinal plants with aromatic rhizome. In traditional medicine in Asian countries, this plant is widely used by local practitioners. This plant is widely cultivated in most Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Ethyl-para-methoxycinnamate and ethyl-cinnamate are found as the main compounds in hexane, dichloromethane, and methanol extracts of K. galanga. This plant is traditionally used as an expectorant, stimulant, diuretic, carminative, and antipyretic remedy. In addition, K. galanga is used for treatment of diabetes, hypertension, cough, asthma, joint fractures, rheumatism, urticaria, vertigo, and intestinal injuries. Therefore, this study aimed to give a sneak peek view on galangal’s ethnobotany, toxicology, pharmacology, and phytochemistry.

Background: Annona squamosa is reported has a significant cytotoxic activity in some cancer cells. Objectives: Thus, this study aim to investigate Annona squamosa leaf extract induced by chitosan nanoparticles (nano-ASLE) to enhance their biological activity as anticancer agent on HeLa cells. Methods: Nano-ASLE (50, 100, 200, 400 µg/mL in DMSO) given on HeLa cells to determined IC 50 value by MTT assay. Then, it was devided into three groups as follow IC 50 , 2IC 50 , 4IC 50 continued with analysis of caspase-3 expression. Results: The present study demonstrated that nano-ASLE can surpress HeLa cells proliferation with the IC 50 value of 344.48 µg/mL and rapid enhancement of caspase-3 activity has the mean score of 65.3 cell expression and the lowest score shows 45.3 cell expression. Conclusion: Nano-ASLE lead to HeLa cell death via the mitochondrial pathway on caspase-3 expression. In addition, the further studies are needed to obtain the loading efficiency, release of drug concentration and in vivo study of nano-ASLE to suppress HeLa cells.

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Globally, the leading cause of death from cancer in women is infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). This calls for imperative actions to explore anticancer drugs against this threatening viral infection, in which case, natural ingredients are presumed to be a promising source. Several studies show that plant-origin compounds such as allicin, apigenin, capsaicin, cyanidin, fisetin, genistein, laricitrin, naringenin, piperine, and syringetin have demonstrated therapeutic effects against several cancer types. In this study, the interaction mechanism of these compounds with HPV-18 E6 oncoprotein, that is known to downregulate tumor suppressor p53, was predicted using an in silico approach. Molecular docking simulations of natural ligands and E6 protein were performe, followed by chemical interaction analysis and 3D molecular visualization. Results indicated that fisetin is the best natural inhibitor as it has the lowest binding energy. It is highly recommended that the results of this study be used as a reference in designing anticancer drugs in vitro and in vivo.