Susceptibility of Malassezia furfur to certain medium chain fatty acids shed light onto novel strategies to control dandruff. This study explored antidandruff activity of the fatty acids and other bioactive compounds from flowers of Cassia auriculata and Cassia alata. The idea was supplementing the growth medium with fatty acids which are inhibitory to Malassezia so that plant-based antidandruff formulations could be developed based on the results. Chloroform and ethanolic flower extracts were tested there in vitro efficacy against M. furfur and the potential antidandruff compounds were identified by gas chromatography-mass spectrophotometry (GC-MS). Minimum inhibitory concentrations were determined for both the extracts and IC50 values of 50 and 88 µM for chloroform extract of C. auriculata and C. alata were recorded. For ethanol extract, IC50 values of 75 and 70 µM were exhibited by C. auriculata and C. alata, respectively. Inhibition of M. furfur through fatty acids from Cassia is the first report, and it is possible to include specific fatty acids in the growth media to inhibit the growth of Malassezia which could be later served as lead molecules in antidandruff formulations. Further, the presence of citronellol, pinitol, anthracenedione and chrysine in Cassia flower extracts and their antidandruff activity reported in this study needed further research on those compounds to formulate effective treatment of Malassezia associated diseases.

The present investigation is carried out to study the invitro cytotoxicity of ethanol extract of Syzygium samarangense leaves on HeLa cell line by using MTT assay. Ethanol extract of S. samarangense showed concentration dependent activity on HeLa cell line with IC50 value of 40.5 μg/ml which shows that ethanol extract of S. samarangense posses significant cytoxicity.Moreover the preliminary phytochemical screening showed the presence of fatty acids, alkaloids, flavonoids, terphenoids, saponins, tannins and steroids which are responsible for its cytotoxicity. There are only a few reports are available for cytotoxicity of ethanol extract of S. samarangense.

Present study aimed to evaluate the chemical composition and biological activity for methanolic extract of Bauhinia tomentosa (Linn.) leaves grown in Western Ghats region of South India. The preliminary phytochemical screening tests revealed the presence of steroids, alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids, glycosides and phenolic compounds in the leaf extract. A total of 19 compounds were identified through gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) analysis of methanolic extract of B. tomentosa. The major compounds identified were phytol (23.96%), n-hexadecanoic acid (11.62%), squalene (8.85%) and the minor compounds are trans-bis(2-methylpropyl)-4,6-dioxane(0.13%), dihydro-cis-α-copaene-8-ol (0.14%), tetradecanoic acid (0.81%), respectively. Antibacterial activity of the extract showed the zone of inhibition 18 mm at 200 μg/mL against S. aureus, followed by 15 and 16 mm against S. anginosus, K. pneumoniae at 200 μg/mL, respectively. Antioxidant activity of methanolic extract of B. tomentosa leaves showed the maximum IC50 value with 75.07 % of scavenging activity at the concentration of 5 μg/mL.