Rodent Tuber

Overview

Rodent tuber (Typhonium flagelliforme) is often used as a traditional remedy for alternative cancer therapies, including leukemia, by various ethnic populations. Native to Southeast Asian countries, also distributed from southern India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Philippines, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, N. Australia. It is now commercially available as a healthcare supplement to cure breast, lung, rectum, liver, prostate, pancreas, and cervical cancers and leukemias.

Vernacular Names

Keladi tikus (Indonesia), Lao shu yu (Chinese), Nalenschena major (India), and Birah taecchil (Singapore).

Agroecology

Found in disturbed wastelands and damp shady habitats; in shallow water by streams, water fields, and moist meadows, often in ditches and along field margins, less often in wet open forest, 0 to 350 m asl.

Morphology

• Rhizome - short, tuberous, whitish, depressed, 1-2 cm long.
• Leaves - variable, 5 to 25 by 0.5 to 18 cm, linear, lanceolate, elliptic, or hastate.
• Flowers - appears alongside leaves, with 5 to 20 cm peduncle. The spathe is convolute at the base, green, ovoid, globose, or depressed, 1.5 to 3.5 by 1.2 to 2 cm. The spadix is divided into four portions, terminated with a lemon yellow rodent tail-like appendix. 
• Berries - pale greenish, two - or three-seeded.

Cultivation

Propagation is by dividing tubers and seeds.

Chemical Constituents

Stigmasterols, saponins, steroids or triterpenoid, coumarins, terpenoid compounds, kaempferol, β-sitosterol, pheophorbide-a, pheophorbide-a, pyropheophorbide-a, methyl pyropheophorbide-a, oleic acid, linoleic acid, linolenic acid.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• Studies have suggested anti-cancer, anti-leukemic, apoptotic, anti-tussive, anti-asthmatic, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, sedative, immunomodulatory, antioxidant, antibacterial, phytoremediation properties.
• In the Philippines, it is used to stop bleeding.
• It is traditionally used as a treatment for cancer, including leukemia.
• Used as a cough suppressant, treatment of asthma, and respiratory ailments.
• Used for traumatic injuries and abscesses.