0944-7113/03/10/04-300 $ 15.00/0 Phytomedicine 10: 300–308, 2003 © Urban & Fischer Verlag http://www.urbanfischer.de/journals/phytomed Phytomedicine  Introduction An increasing number of research papers and reviews clearly indicate that medicinal plants exhibit a variety of therapeutic properties (Ahmad et al. 1998; Datta et al. 1998; Abo et al. 2000; Graf, 2000; Ankli et al. 2002; Neto et al. 2002) and could provide health secu- rity to rural people in primary health care. Among medicinal plants, Aegle marmelos Correa ap- pears to be relevant (Rana et al. 1997; Shoba and Thomas, 2001). This plant is available in India, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka. Its distribution is mainly within the sub-Himalayan forests, in dry hilly places ascending to 4,000 ft. It is called “Shivadume”, the tree of Shiva. Since ancient time, its leaves are of- fered to Shiva and Parvathi. A. marmelos has an impor- tant place in indigenous systems of medicine. With re- spect to pharmacology, alcoholic and aqueous extracts of the leaves had similar effects as digoxin in amplitude and contractions of the frog heart and methanolic ex- In vitro antiproliferative effects on human tumor cell lines of extracts from the Bangladeshi medicinal plant Aegle marmelos Correa I. Lampronti 1 , D. Martello 1 , N. Bianchi 1 , M Borgatti 1 , E. Lambertini 1 , R. Piva 1 , S. Jabbar 2 , M. Shahabuddin Kabir Choudhuri 2 , M. Tareq Hassan Khan 2, *, and R. Gambari 1,3 1 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy 2 Pharmacology Research Laboratory, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Science and Technology Chittagong, Chittagong, Bangladesh 3 Laboratory for the Development of Pharmacological and Pharmacogenomic Therapy of Thalassaemia, Biotechnology Cen- tre, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy * Present address: International Center for Chemical Sciences, H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry, University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan Summary In the present paper we show that extracts from Aegle marmelos Correa are able to inhibit the in vitro proliferation of human tumor cell lines, including the leukemic K562, T-lymphoid Jurkat, B- lymphoid Raji, erythroleukemic HEL, melanoma Colo38, and breast cancer MCF7 and MDA- MB-231 cell lines. Molecules present within the studied Aegle marmelos C. extracts were identified by gas-chromatography/mass-spectrometry analysis; three derivatives (butyl p-tolyl sulfide, 6- methyl-4-chromanone and butylated hydroxyanisole) were found to exhibit strong activity in in- hibiting in vitro cell growth of human K562 cells. The antiproliferative activity of these compounds was found to be comparable to that of known antitumor agents, including cisplatin, chromomycin, cytosine arabinoside and 5-fluorouracil. In addition, the antiproliferative activity of butyl-p-tolyl sulfide, 6-methyl-4-chromanone and 5-methoxypsolaren was associated to activation of the differ- entiation pattern of K562 cells. Key words: Aegle marmelos, antiproliferative activity, anticancer agents, medicinal plants