Hindawi Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2017, Article ID 7218562, 14 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/7218562 Research Article Potential Antitumor Activity and Apoptosis Induction of Glossostemon bruguieri Root Extract against Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells Mona S. Alwhibi,1 Mahmoud I. M. Khalil,2 Mohamed M. Ibrahim,1,3 Gehan A. El-Gaaly,1 and Ahmed S. Sultan4,5 1 Botany and Microbiology Department, Science College, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia 2Molecular Biology Unit, Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, P.O. Box 21511, Alexandria, Egypt 3Botany and Microbiology Department, Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, P.O. Box 21511, Alexandria, Egypt 4Biochemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, P.O. Box 21511, Alexandria, Egypt 5Oncology Department, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington,DC20057,USA Correspondence should be addressed to Ahmed S. Sultan; dr
[email protected] Received 19 June 2016; Revised 12 September 2016; Accepted 12 January 2017; Published 22 March 2017 Academic Editor: Cheorl-Ho Kim Copyright © 2017 Mona S. Alwhibi 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. Glossostemon bruguieri (moghat) is used as a nutritive and demulcent drink. This study was performed to investigate the antiproliferative effects of moghat root extract (MRE) and its apoptotic mechanism in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells, HepG2 and Hep3B. MTT assay, morphological changes, apoptosis enzyme linked immunosorbent assay, caspase and apoptotic activation, flow cytometry, and immunoblot analysis were employed.