PHYTOCHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF OCHRADENUS ARABICUS CHAUDHARY, HILLC. & A. G. MILL.

Abstract

Plants are natural factories continuously producing valuable compounds in the most cost efficient way. The term of medicinal plants include a variety of plants used in herbalism and some of these plants have medicinal activities. These medicinal plants considered as rich source of bioactive ingredients can be, used in drug development and synthesis. Numerous approaches have been used to obtain compounds for drug discovery including isolation from plants and other natural sources. This research project is mainly concerned with the isolation, characterization of bioactive chemical constituents and Biological Evaluation of medicinally important plant Ochradenus arabicus. The current research and experimental work carried out at University of Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman and Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. The plant was collected from Jabal Al-Akhdar, is one of the diverse floral region of Sultanate of Oman. The whole plant of Ochradenus arabicus was shade dried and ground into powder. The collected plant materials were extracted with methanol and different fractions of ethyl acetate, hexane, chloroform, butanol and water were made. These fractions in various concentrations were subjected to different biological assays including phenolic, flavonoid, antioxidant, allophatic, alpha-glucosidase inhibitor and anticancer. The fractions ethyl acetate, butanol and water showed anticancer activity, reducing viability of cancer cell (MCF7, HepG2, HT29, HCT116) lines. In alpha glucosidase inhibition assay only butanol fraction was found little active and showed 12% activity. The ethyl acetate fraction was significantly higher in phenolic and flavonoid contents, which also showed higher antioxidant activity as compared to other fractions. The aqueous fraction exhibited higher phytotoxic activity prevented the germination of lettuce seeds. The chloroform fraction (85.5g) was selected and then chromatographed over a silica gel column, which results in five known compounds for the first time from O. arabicus; 1Octacosanol, β-sitosterol, β -sitosterol-β-D-glycoside, Ursolic acid and Choerospondin. The structure of these isolated compounds was elucidated using different spectroscopic techniques like NMR, UV, IR, Mass Spectrometry (EI-MS) etc. Our results shows that O. arabicus has the potential to discover the potent anticancer agents. Further fractionation of the bioactive fraction can help us to find the lead anticancer compound. Phytochemicals isolated from medicinal plants have been playing a significant role directly or indirectly to combat cancer disorders.