58 Annales Bogorienses Vol. 23, No. 2, 2019 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14203/ann.bogor.2019.v22.n2.58-65 POTENCY OF Curcuma aeruginosa AS A CHEMOPREVENTIVE CANDIDATE AGENT ON 7,12-Dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA)- INDUCED RAT SPLEEN Asri Sulfianti 1 *, Nur Hasanah 2 , Agung Eru Wibowo 1 , Kurnia Agustini 1 , I Made Artika 2 1 Center of Pharmaceutical and Medical Technology, Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology, Indonesia 2 Department of Biochemistry, Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor, Indonesia Abstract Present investigation shows that the extract of C. aeruginosa attenuates DMBA-induced spleen carcinogenesis in Wistar rats. Three-week female Wistar rats were treated with three different C. aeruginosa extract doses (CA1: 40 mg/200 g body weight, BW; CA2: 80 mg/200 g BW; CA3: 160 mg/200 g BW) and were induced with DMBA after one-week administration of these doses. A commercial immunostimulant, and DMBA only were also given to each group as positive and negative control, respectively. The development of tumors was evaluated by investigating the incidence of tumor and tumor multiplicity during the experiment. Spleen mass index and histological parameters such as white pulp, centrum germinativum, and marginalis zone were also examined. Based on our study, the administration of C. aeruginosa extract during and after carcinogen induction gave several impacts on rat carcinogenesis. At the extract dose of 80 mg/200 g BW, tumor incidence of animals were least (P<0.05). However, all doses did not show any effect to the spleen mass index, though the highest dose (160 mg/200 g BW) was found to cause changes in white pulp and marginalis zone boards. This trend indicates that it takes higher dose to cause an immune response effect reaching the organs. Keywords: chemoprevention, cancer, Curcuma aeruginosa, DMBA, Wistar, spleen ---------------------------- * Corresponding author: Asri Sulfianti Center of Pharmaceutical and Medical Technology LAPTIAB BPPT Building NO 611-612, Puspiptek, Serpong, South of Tangerang, 15311, Indonesia. Tel. +62-21-7560707, Fax. +62-21-7560707 E-mail. asri.sulfianti@bppt.go.id Introduction Cancer is a group of diseases characterized by uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells (Garcia, Cristina, & Jose, 2019; Haasanein et al., 2011). The resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents becomes a major problem in the clinical treatment of cancer. In spite of astonishing advances in modern medicine, such as radiotherapy, surgery, and hormone therapy, cancer remains a worldwide health problem (Vijayarathna & Sasidharan, 2012). One approach with enormous potential to overcome this problem is chemoprevention (Benetou, Lagiou, & Lagiou, 2015; Desai et al., 2008). Chemoprevention is defined as the use of natural, synthetic or biological agents to reverse, suppress or prevent either the initial phases of carcinogenesis or the progression of premalignant cells to invasive disease (Benetou et al., 2015; Steward & Brown, 2013; Tsao, Kim, & Hong, 2004; Yang et al., 2011). Plants are valuable natural product resources that offer compounds with a wide variety of biological activities and chemical structures (Benetou et al., 2015; Haasanein et al., 2011). However, the evaluation and the discovery of plant anticancer agents need a long-term process that encompasses many steps. The step broaches with the screening for anticancer properties, followed by the isolation and identification of bioactive compounds obliged to anticancer properties, toxicity estimation of the isolated compounds and eventually in vivo anticancer activity testing to