As there is a resurgence of interest in plants as promising sources of new active pharmaceutical constituents, the present study has been designed to establish the preliminary biological activities of Blumea clarkei Hook.f. leaves. Here, the crude methanol extract of the leaves along with its organic and aqueous soluble fractions were subjected to different in vitro and in vivo assays. The ethyl acetate soluble fraction exhibited the highest total phenolic content (71.59 mg of GAE/gm of extract) and DPPH free radical scavenging (IC50 value 19.25 μg/ml) whereas another polar fraction; the aqueous soluble extractive showed the maximum cytotoxicity (LC50 value of 18.60 μg/ml) in the brine shrimp lethality assay. In membrane stabilizing activity evaluation, the inhibition of hypotonic solution and heat induced hemolysis were revealed maximum by the DCM (30.64%) and aqueous soluble fraction (39.15%), respectively while the crude methanol extract exhibited the highest thrombolytic potential (30.47% clot lysis). The central analgesic activity of the crude extract significantly increased the latent response time in tail-immersion method (p<0.001) at doses 200 and 400 mg/kg of body weight after 90 minutes of administration when compared to the control group. In acetic acid-induced writhing method, the plant extract showed prominent peripheral analgesia (p<0.001) with 47.54% and 65.57% inhibition at 200- and 400-mg/kg of body weight, respectively. In addition, a dose dependent hypoglycemic and antidiarrheal activities were also observed by the crude extract. Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Journal 24(2): 149-158, 2021

Tamarind or Tamarindus indica L. is a multipurpose plant distributed throughout the tropics including Bangladesh. The present study was conducted to establish the preliminary antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and thrombolytic activities of methanol extract of T. indica seeds along with its Kupchan fractions. To evaluate the antioxidant properties, the total phenolic content of T. indica was determined and expressed in gallic acid equivalent (GAE). Alongside, DPPH free radical scavenging assay was performed to ensure the antioxidant properties of the seeds where the methanolic crude extract revealed the maximum activity having IC50 value of 9.43 μg/ml. In the antimicrobial assay by disk diffusion method, only non-polar fractions of the extract showed mild antimicrobial activity against the test organisms tested while the polar crude methanol extract exhibited the maximum inhibition (58.16%, p < 0.001) of hypotonic solution-induced erythrocyte rupture in anti-inflammatory investigation among all the partitionates. During evaluation of thrombolytic activity in terms of percent of clot lysis, the methanol soluble fraction exhibited the highest percent of thrombolysis (23.5%) as compared to the reference standard, streptokinase (64.25%). The findings of the current study rationalize some of the traditional uses of T. indica and preliminarily ascertain its bioactive potential, which may act as a base for phytochemical and mechanism-based pharmacological studies of the plant in future. Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Journal 25(1): 9-15, 2022 (January)