Sesquiterpene lactones, especially epoxy sesquiterpene lactones, have

anticancer activity very well. Some flavonoids too

Dear Kathleen Trisha Oquendo Dalida , Selecting antitumor drugs depends on what mechanism of action may have your testing extracts. There are several antitumor agents which acts by different way.

Cytotoxins are a group of anticancer drugs that cause necrosis of cancer cells. With necrosis, the cell membrane, the nucleus and its other components are damaged, leading to cell death.

Cytostatics, unlike cytotoxins, trigger the process of apoptosis inside the cancer cell - a self-destruct program embedded in any cell since its birth. Doxorubicin, Cisplatin, Fluorouracil, Hydroxyurea, Cyclophosphanum are the most well-known cytostatic drugs.

Since your extracts contains plant and algal extracts, probably you can choose as a standards other type of natural antitumor preparations like Garmin, Dasatinib, Curcumin, Fucoidan.

The big question is: what do you need an anti-tumor standard for? By and large, it's accepted that doxorubicin works, so it does make a fine standard for killing cancer cells. But, since it's widely accepted that it works, it also doesn't give you much information... unless it DOESN'T work, but then it's a poor standard.

Are you using a novel tumor system, and you don't know how any drugs at all will impact it? Or do you just want an alternate way to kill cells? In the former case, any anti-tumor drug is worth trying - and you might have to try several to get an effect. But assuming the latter: the cheapest thing you can do is probably to try serum starvation. Simply culture the cells with little to no serum in their medium and you should see a dramatic decrease in proliferation rate, ability to form foci, etc.

If you want a standard to compare your compounds to, what you really want is the most similar compound available. And that, you'd just have to search the literature for something commercially available that looks like whatever in particular you're working with. Because it doesn't say much if, say, your macrocyclic compound is more or less potent than cisplatin. It does say something if it's more or less potent than a very similar macrocycle.

5-FU (5-fluorouracil)

good in vitro, very cheap standard and works clinically also

Sesquiterpene lactones, especially epoxy sesquiterpene lactones, have

anticancer activity very well. Some flavonoids too