Penulis: Shamhani Ismail

Many people in this world still rely on plants as their medicine for everyday healthcare needs. Despite much scientific and technological progress, herbal medicines still bring an enormous contribution to human health today. Aloe vera is one of these valueable medicinal plants that is bestowed with many compounds having therapeutic effects such as aloe emodin, an anthraquinone that was found to have therapeutic effects against cancers and can act as an antibacteria, antivirus and antifungus as well. Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), World Health Organization (WHO) Grade IV brain cancer cells is one of the deadly cancers with poor prognosis resulting in patients having cognitive impairment and other disabilities in speech and vision depending on where the cancer cells are located. The current study was conducted to evaluate the effect of aloe emodin against GBM cell line, U-87 MG via performing a series of experiments that included cell proliferation, cell viability, apoptosis and cell cycle distribution analysis. Further studies revealed that the anti-proliferative effect of aloe emodin was caused by induction of apoptosis that was shown through flow cytometry analysis and indicated by typical morphological changes such as cell shrinkage, membrane blebbing, formation of apoptotic bodies, chromatin condensation and DNA fragmentation. Further experiment was done to show the mechanism of apoptosis whether through intrinsic or extrinsic pathway. Flow cytometry analysis and morphology analysis on U-87 MG cells using JC-1 showed that apoptosis occurred through intrinsic pathway where reduction of mitochondrial membrane potential has occurred on cells treated with aloe emodin.