Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2012, Article ID 164689, 11 pages doi:10.1155/2012/164689 Research Article Bioassay-Guided Isolation of Cytotoxic Cycloartane Triterpenoid Glycosides from the Traditionally Used Medicinal Plant Leea indica Yau Hsiung Wong, 1 Habsah Abdul Kadir, 1 and Sui Kiong Ling 2 1 Biomolecular Research Group, Biochemistry Division, Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 2 Division of natural products, Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM), 52109 Kepong, Malaysia Correspondence should be addressed to Habsah Abdul Kadir, aakhak@yahoo.com Received 16 May 2011; Revised 18 August 2011; Accepted 30 August 2011 Academic Editor: Cheorl-Ho Kim Copyright © 2012 Yau Hsiung Wong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Leea indica is a medicinal plant used traditionally to cure cancer. In this study, the cytotoxic compounds of L. indica were isolated using bioassay-guided approach. Two cycloartane triterpenoid glycosides, mollic acid arabinoside (MAA) and mollic acid xyloside (MAX), were firstly isolated from L. indica. They inhibited the growth of Ca Ski cervical cancer cells with IC 50 of 19.21 μM (MAA) and 33.33 μM (MAX). MRC5 normal cell line was used to calculate selectivity index. MAA and MAX were about 8 and 4 times more cytotoxic to Ca Ski cells compared to MRC5. The cytotoxicity of MAA was characterized by both cytostatic and cytocidal effects. MAA decreased the expression of proliferative cell nuclear antigen, increased sub-G1 cells, and arrested cells in S and G2/M phases. This study provides the evidence for the ethnomedicinal use of L. indica and paves the way for future mechanism studies on the anticancer effects of MAA. 1. Introduction Plants provide us with broad spectrum of biologically active compounds that have potential therapeutic effects on a myriad of diseases. Leea indica (Burm. f.) Merrill is a traditional Chinese medicine which belongs to the Leeaceae family. It is a perennial shrub which is widely grown in tropical and subtropical countries such as Malaysia, China, India, and Thailand. The leaves and roots of L. indica are used to treat diabetes, cardiac diseases, and various ailments such as fever, headache, dizziness, soreness, eczema, sprain, leprosy, bone fracture, body pain, muscle spasm, diarrhea, and dysentery [1–7]. In view of that, some phytochem- ical studies have been conducted [8–11]. For biological studies, antimicrobial, antioxidant, antiinflammatory, hypo- glycemic, and phosphodiesterase inhibitory activities have been reported in L. indica [10–16]. In Leeaceae family, L. guineense and L. macrophylla were ethnomedicinally used to treat cancer [17, 18]. For L. indica, it is used as an ingredient in the preparation to treat leucorrhea, intestinal cancer, and uterus cancer [19]. The leaf decoction is consumed by women during pregnancy and delivery for birth control or to treat obstetric diseases and body pain [20, 21]. In addition, the dried leaves are consumed as a tea beverage and are believed to be effective against cancer [22]. In our previous cytotoxicity screening, the crude ethanol extract and fractions (ethyl acetate, hexane, and water) were found to inhibit the growth of Ca Ski cervical cancer cell line [23]. This provides the evidence for the use of L. indica as folkloric treatment of cancer. In the present study, we reported the further progress whereby the active fraction (ethyl acetate) of L. indica was subjected to bioassay-guided approach in order to isolate the cytotoxic compounds from L. indica. 2. Methods 2.1. Plant Sample Collection, Identification and Deposition of Voucher Specimen. From the previous report [23], the fresh leaves of L. indica were collected, authenticated, extracted,