The isolation and further fractionation for active compounds with anticancer activity from dichloromethane fraction of Chinese cabbage kimchi were carried out, and β- sitosterol and ergost-5-en-3.beta-ol (linoleic acid derivative) were identified as major compounds from GC-MS, EI-MS spectrum, ¹H-NMR and ¹³C-NMR spectrum. The active compounds inhibited not only the survival of human caner cells, AGS gastric adenocarcinoma cell, HT-29 colon adenocarcinoma cell, HL-60 promyelocytic leukemia cell and MG-63 osteosarcoma cell, but also the synthesis of DNA within AGS cell. In particular, β-sitosterol showed the stronger in vitro anticancer activity than linoleic acid derivative. The present study suggests that anticancer effect of Chinese cabbage kimchi would be attributed to the active compounds, β-sitosterol and linoleic acid derivative.

Keywords: Kimchi, Anticancer effect, Cancer cell, β-sitosterol, Linoleic acid