The herb Centella asiatica (L.) Urb. (Apiaceae) is extensively grown throughout Vietnam. This medicinal plant possesses a wide range of biological properties, including anti-oxidant, anticancer, memory stimulation, and wound healing . Madecassic acid is one of the three main pentacyclic triterpenoid acids produced by the plant, together with asiatic acid and terminolic acid . The compound has been reported to have valuable pharmacological activities, such as wound healing , antioxidant , anti-inflammatory , and antidiabetic effects . Recently, madecassic acid has been showed to induce apoptosis in the mouse colon cancer cell line CT26, and much attention has been paid to increasing the anticancer activity of this molecule through chemical modification of its structure: new madecassic acid derivatives have been reported to have significantly enhanced cytotoxicity towards cancer cell lines .