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Introduction: Plants have been considered as potential alternative for antimicrobial antibiotics owing to vast reserve of secondary metabolites. Last few decades have experienced an upsurge in demand and delivery of herbal products for health benefits as plant derived bioactive compounds have capability to interact with a wide variety of targets. The main focus of this review was to congregate vital information related to imperative bioactive components of medicinal plants having therapeutic potential with particular reference to antimicrobial activity against pathogenic bacteria. Our study intended to comprehend the mode of action of these phytopharmaceuticals for their scientific validation and drug development. Methods: A narrative review of papers reporting antimicrobial activity of medicinal plants against pathogenic bacteria, identification of the prospective bioactive compounds with antimicrobial potential and understanding their mechanism of action has been envisaged. Results: This review includes anthology of recent published information on phytoconstituents of various medicinal plants belonging to different families around the globe, tested and validated against various pathogenic bacteria. This study unveils the treasure of antimicrobial potential of plant species, which is also an appraisal of information related to mechanism of action of these phytochemicals required for their antimicrobial activity. Conclusions: There is resurgence in use of herbal medicines and identification of pharmacologically active compounds with their scientific validation. It will play a pivotal role in perpetuating and promoting wider usages of drugs based on plant extracts. A missing link for establishment of phytocompounds as an alternative drug requires understanding their mode of action and exploitation.

Some bioactive compounds from plants are excellent sources of anticancer drugs. These natural phytochemicals are used in active research for cancer prevention and treatment. In our present study invitro anticancer activity was evaluated using dimethylformamide leaf extract of Phyllanthus amarus as its GC-MS analysis revealed many active principles which exhibited good antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. There were reports that anti-proliferative activity is always coupled with antioxidant activity. Anti-cancer activity of the P. amarus leaf extract was tested against HCT 15 and T47D cell lines and inhibitory effect on HCT 15 cell line was found to be greater than T47D cell line. With the increasing concentration of extract, the percentage of viability of cell lines was found to be decreased for both the cell lines. The anticancer activity of leaf extract of P. amarus is comparable to positive control drug doxorubicin. N-Hexadecanoic acid, lignans and polyphenol compounds in leaf extract may be responsible for the anticancer activity. These phytochemicals block cancer cell propagation by controlling cancer stem cells and can influence all the stages of cancer development effectively.

Phyllanthus amarus belonging to family Euphorbiaceae is an important medicinal plant from ancient times which is used in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. It is a small annual herb mostly found in Central and Southern India. All parts of this plant have medicinal value and are used in traditional medicines for curing various diseases such as jaundice, hepatitis B, C, microbial infections, viral diseases, tumors, and kidney stones. Keeping in view its immense medicinal potential, phytochemical analysis was performed using different solvents such as ethyl acetate, dimethylformamide, chloroform, dichloromethane, and n-Hexane. All the plant parts, viz., root, stem and leaf were separately analyzed for the detection of phenols and flavonoids, of which leaf exhibited the highest concentration compared to root and stem. Maximum percentage of phenols and flavonoids could be detected with dimethylformamide in comparison to other solvents that were used in the study. Dimethylformamide leaf extract displayed highest phenolic content of 40.75 mg/g and the highest flavonoid content of 51.5 mg/g.