Vernolac is a capsule sold in Sri Lanka for the management of cancer. Until now, nobody had worked out how its five herbal ingredients might act on the disease. A new study in PLoS One, published July 1, 2026, tried to answer that with computer modelling and cell tests.
The capsule, made by Fadna Life Sciences, contains Vernonia zeylanica, Nigella sativa seeds, Hemidesmus indicus roots, Leucas zeylanica and Smilax glabra rhizome. Three of those plants, N. sativa, H. indicus and S. glabra, appear in an equal-parts decoction that a family of Ayurvedic physicians in Sri Lanka has used for generations against cancers. The authors, led by Vass Gunawardane, describe their work as the first network pharmacology investigation of a Sri Lankan polyherbal formulation. It was funded as a Master of Science research project at the University of Colombo.
What the models found
The team gathered the plants’ chemical compounds from databases and the literature, then filtered them for drug-likeness and oral bioavailability. That left 155 compounds. Predicting their protein targets and comparing those with cancer-related targets gave 137 in common.
Of those, fourteen sat at the centre of the interaction network: AKT1, BCL2, CASP3, CTNNB1, EGFR, ESR1, GAPDH, HSP90AA1, HSP90AB1, IL6, JUN, SRC, STAT3 and TNF. Compounds that stood out included vernolactone, thymoquinone, quercetin, nigellidine, α-hederin and carvacrol. Chemical profiling of a supercritical CO2 extract found terpenes, fatty acids and sterols, among them stigmasterol, thymoquinone and carvacrol.
Docking and dynamics simulations pointed to two interactions not described before: vernolactone with β-catenin, and α-hederin with CDK4.
The cell tests
The authors also tested the extract on cells with the Sulforhodamine B assay. It slowed the growth of three cancer cell lines far more than it did a non-cancerous one. The IC50 values were 54.01 μg/mL for MCF-7, 85.52 μg/mL for Caco-2 and 42.41 μg/mL for NTERA-2 cl.D1, against 803.5 μg/mL for non-cancerous MCF-10A cells.
From the network analysis, the researchers suggest the compounds may act through several pathways tied to apoptosis, immune modulation, oxidative stress, inflammation and cell proliferation. They also see a possible role in drug resistance and treatment response, and call the work a computational basis for using Vernolac alongside conventional therapy.
That is a long way from a treatment. The work was done in a computer and in cell cultures, and the authors say it warrants further investigation in preclinical and clinical settings. Anyone with cancer should talk to their doctor before taking any supplement.
Sources
- A network pharmacology-based approach and molecular docking study to explore the therapeutic potential of a nutraceutical formula (Vernolac) in the treatment of cancer
- A network pharmacology-based approach and molecular docking study to explore the therapeutic potential of a nutraceutical formula (Vernolac) in the treatment of cancer.
- Anticancer Potential of Nutraceutical Formulations in MNU-induced Mammary Cancer in Sprague Dawley Rats
