The composition and bioactivity of natural plant extracts strongly depends on the extraction technique employed. Clinacanthus nutans Lindau (C. nutans) is a well-known medicinal plant in South-East Asia that has been traditionally used for treatment of hepatitis, skin-rashes and snake venom poisoning, and recently has attracted attention for its applications for treatment and prevention of cancer diseases. In previous studies, the extraction of bioactive compounds from C. nutans by conventional Soxhlet solvent extraction has been described, but this method shows limitations in terms of selectivity, extraction yield and toxicity of the solvents employed. In this study, phytochemical compounds were extracted from leaves and stems of C. nutans by microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), pressurized microwave-assisted extraction (PMAE), supercritical carbon dioxide extraction (SFE) and Soxhlet method to investigate the best technique in terms of yield, extraction time and recovery of bioactive compounds: phenols, flavonoids, phytosterols and ␤-sitosterol. The extracted phytocompounds and phenolics were characterized by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC). The results showed that MAE was the best technique to achieve a high yield and a maximal total polyphenol content (11.30 ± 0.39 mg GAE/g DM) and flavonoids content (and 4.66 ± 0.20 mg GAE/g DM), whereas SFE was the best method for phytosterols and ␤-Sitosterol extraction. P-MAE merely enhanced the polyphenol and flavonoids yield to 14.56 ± 0.77 mg GAE/g DM and 5.29 ± 0.30 mg QE/g DM respectively, without significant variations on the type of compounds obtained. MAE appears as the most efficient technique for the extraction of phytochemical compounds from C. nutans in a short time with a reasonable yield and a good selectivity toward bioactive nutraceutical compounds, with high concentrations of antioxidants, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial compounds.

Complicated and strict protocols are followed to tune the size of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) in chemical synthesis methods. In this study, we address the polarity of solvents as a tool for tailoring the size of GNPs in the chemical reduction method. The effects of varying polarity index of the reaction medium on synthesizing gold nanoparticles by chemical reduction method have been investigated. Ethanol as a polar solvent, ethanol-water mixture as reaction medium, L-ascorbic acid as reducing agent, and polyvinylpyrrolidone as stabilizer were used to synthesize GNPs. The polarity index of the reaction medium was adjusted by changing the volume ratio of ethanol to water. UV-Vis, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterizations reveal that the growth of nanoparticles was gradually increased (~22 to 219 nm hydrodynamic diameter) with decreasing value of polarity index of the reaction medium (~8.2 to 5.2). Furthermore, the high polarity index of the reaction medium produced smaller and spherical nanoparticles, whereas lower polarity index of reaction medium results in bigger size of GNPs with different shapes. These results imply that the mechanistic of the growth, assembly, and aggregation phenomena of ligand or stabilizer-capped GNPs strongly rely on the polarity of solvent molecules. Using the proposed methodology, wide size range of GNPs with different morphology sizes can be synthesized by simply modulating the volume percentage of organic solvent in the reaction medium.

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