Chitosan Elicitation for Enhancing of Vincristine and Vinblastine Accumulation in Cell Culture of Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don

Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don is an important herbal plant. There are two important alkaloids, vinblastine and vincristine, use in anti-cancer drugs. In this study production of the two alkaloids was enhanced in C. roseus cell cultures, in a Murashige and Skoog (MS) liquid medium supplemented with 1.5 mg/L 2,4-D, 0.5 mg/L kinetin and 30 g/L sucrose, by adding 0, 50, 100, 250 or 500 mg/L medium molecular weight chitosan or chitosan derived from shrimp shell. After 14 days of culture, the cell suspension at stationary phase in the 100 mg/L medium molecular weight chitosan could produce the highest amounts of vinblastine and vincristine at 4.15 and 5.48 µg/mg cell dry weight, respectively. At the same time, the controls (0 mg/L chitosan) produced the two alkaloids at only 2.43 and 2.49 µg/mg cell dry weight, respectively. For chitosan from shrimp shell, it was found that 100 mg/L chitosan could lead to the highest quantity of 4.09 µg vinblastine/mg cell dry weight. The highest amount of 5.47 µg vincristine/mg cell dry weight was obtained when 250 mg/L chitosan was added.