Cervical cancer is the second most common carcinoma in the world among women and is highly chemoresistant and radio resistant, often resulting in local treatment failure. For locally advanced disease, radiation is combined with low-dose chemotherapy; however, this modality often leads to severe toxicity. Prevention of cancer through dietary intervention recently has received an increasing interest, and dietary agents have become not only important potential chemopreventive, but also therapeutic agents when combined with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. In this study, we observed that gemcitabine was highly cytotoxic to both cancer and normal cells while clove extract (0.7-8 mg mL-1) was found to be comparatively more cytotoxic towards cancer cells. Notably, combination of low dose gemcitabine and ethanolic clove extract (2 and 3 mg mL-1) had more pronounced cytotoxic effect on cancer cells than single modalities. It is noteworthy that use of clove extract increased the efficacy of gemcitabine and importantly, it was found to be minimally toxic to normal cells. Together, these results suggest a novel mechanism may be involved in the synergistic effect of this combination.