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Many types of naturally growing plants are used traditionally for the treatment of different types of cancers and infectious diseases. In this report, the cytotoxic activity of 30 medicinal plants, commonly used in folk medicine in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, was evaluated in vitro using Vero and HEp-2 cell lines. Plants were randomly chosen and harvested from different districts of both countries based on ethnobotanical information and subsequently extracted by methanol. Serial two-fold dilutions of each extract, starting from the concentration of 1000 µg/ml, were incubated with Vero and HEp-2 cells for 72 h. The cytotoxic effect of different extracts was in vitro characterized by identification of cellular alterations microscopically and cellular viability colormetrically. The plant extracts were classified according to the minimal toxic concentration and 50% cytotoxicity concentration indexes into three groups: highly cytotoxic (8 …