Cytotoxic Cycloartane Triterpenoid Saponins from the Rhizomes of Cimicifuga foetida

Cimicifuga foetida, commonly known as “shengma”, is a famous traditional chinese medicine native to china. The roots of C. foetida have been widely used to relieve fever and inflammation for thousand years and also have been officially listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia [ 1 , 2 ]. During the past decades, the cyclolanostane triterpenoid glycosides of Cimicifuga genus have been noticed for their strong cytotoxic activities on cancer, especially breast cancer. Actein is the representative cyclolanostane triterpene isolated from Cimicifuga , exhibited an anti-angiogenic and anti-cancer activities on human breast cancer models by suppressing the protein expressions JNK/ERK pathways. Further anti-metastatic activity study showed that actein could down-regulated the protein expression of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and affect AKT and NF-κB pathways [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. In addition, actein also showed cytotoxic activities against the hepatobiliary cancer, glioma growth, liver cancer and cervical cancer [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Because the anti-breast cancer activity of actein, the pharmacodynamics, pharmacology and toxicology experiments were tested by us. In order to carry out the preclinical research of actein, a simply and fast method is needed to enrich considerable amount of actein from the roots of C. foetida .