Cardiac glycosides are used for treatment of irregular heartbeats, cardiac arrhythmia and congestive heart failures. In this research, digitoxin as a cardiac glycoside was identified and isolated for the first time in the world from Adonis aestivalis and investigated for its cytotoxic activity against cervical cancer cell (HeLa) lines and human lymphocytes by MTT test. Digitoxin extracted from the aerial parts of the plant collected from west of Iran and purified by column and thin layer chromatographic techniques. The structure of isolated cardiac glycoside was identified by IR, 1H NMR and 13C NMR methods and so the presence of digitoxin was established. The half maximal inhibitory concentration values for cervical cancer and lymphocyte cells were obtained to be 5.62 and 412.94 μg/mL. The results of this study introduced the new resource of digitoxin which has considerable cytotoxic effects against HeLa cancer cells but did not damage normal human lymphocyte cells.
Keywords: Cardiac glycoside; Iran; cytotoxicity; digitoxin.