Rhizomes Of Kaempferia Galanga L. Case Study

Over the past half century, humans have used natural products in the forms of herbal (traditional) medicines to treat several diseases. Natural products are secondary metabolites of living organisms including plants, animals, marine invertebrates, and microorganisms; these living organisms have, through changes or adaptations, million years of evolution in order to survive and to keep their species alive as long as possible. It has played the significant roles in human health and became the major starting materials for chemical diversity since long time ago. Consequently, natural products often have biological activities, and they also have tendency to bind and interact with biomolecules such as enzyme and receptors, thus having appropriate
(Cekur in Malaysia) belongs to the Zingiberaceae family is an aromatic perennial herb with tuberous rootstocks (Dash, Nasrin, & Ali, 2014). This plant can be found in South India and Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. The rhizomes of Kaempferia galanga L. have important role in indigenous medicine as carminative, expectorant, diuretic and stimulant. It had been used for the treatment of various skin disorders and widely used in the treatment of diabetes mellitus, various inflammatory and lipid disorders (Dash et al., 2014). According to Rajendra et al. (2011) and Atun (2014), the rhizomes of Kaempferia galanga contain volatile oil and other compounds that have medicinal values make it become the demand items to the traditional health care practitioners. Its rhizome is being used traditionally for the treatment of indigestion, cold, pectoral and abdominal pains, headache, expectorant, diuretic and carminative (Jagadish P. et al., 2010). Additionally, it is also found to have anticancer, antihypertensive and larvicidal activity (Tara V. et al., 2006). As example, it is found that methanolic extracts of K.galanga showed inhibitory effects towards human cardiac fibroblast (HCF-7 cell line) and human T cell leukemia (HT-29 cell line) (Kirana et al.,
Cancer is a multistep process which causes the affected cells to display uncontrolled growth, invasion or even metastasis which is the spreading of these cancerous cells to other locations in the body via lymph or blood. Cancer causes uncontrolled cell proliferation which disrupts the balance between cell division and cell differentiation (Becker et al., 2006). In 2001, it was found that the most common cancers occur among men are prostate, lung and bronchus and colon and rectum while among women, the most frequently diagnosed cancers are cancers of breast, lung and bronchus and colon and rectum (Greenlee et al., 2001). In 1998, 23.2% of all deaths is because of cancer. According to the study, cancer is the leading cause of death among women aged 40 to 59 and ranks first is among women aged 60 to 79 (Greenlee et al.,