Plant tissue culture is used to grow plant cells, tissues, or organs under sterile and determined conditions on
culture media. It is alternative to traditional vegetative propagation, and is applied as an effective technology for the production of valuable secondary metabolites. The Artemisia aucheri (A. aucheri) was obtained from shoot culture grown on MS (Murashige and Skoog 1962) medium. Shade-dried aerial parts of in vitro grown A. aucheri (50 g) were extracted with
dichloromethane-
acetone (90:10). The extract was submitted for isolation to
sephadex gel chromatography and preparative thin layer chromatography, which resulted in identification of one known
eudesmanolide named artemin or 2,5-dihydroxy-12, 6-eudesmanolide-4(15)-en for the first time in this plant. In cell cytotoxicity test, artemin showed cytotoxic activity against DU-145,LNCaP
prostate cancer, and MCF-7
breast cancer cells with IC50 values of 82.2 ± 5.6, 89.1 ± 6.3 and 111.5 ± 6.7 μM , respectively. Artemin was more active against
prostate cancer cells with approximately same cytotoxicity against LNCaP
androstane dependent cells and DU 145 which is
androstane independent.