Antiproliferative and Antioxidant Activities of Two Extracts of the Plant Species Euphorbia dendroides L.

Abstract

Background: These days, the desire for naturally occurring antioxidants has significantly increased, especially for use in foodstuffs, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical products, to replace synthetic antioxidants that are regularly constrained due to their carcinogenicity. Methods: The study in hand aimed to appraise the antioxidant effect of two Euphorbia dendroides extracts using reducing power, anti-peroxidation, and DPPH (1,1 Diphenyl 2 Pycril Hydrazil) scavenging essays, in addition to the anticancer activity against two tumor cell lines, namely C6 (rat brain tumor)cells, and Hela (human uterus carcinoma)cell lines. Results: The results indicated that the ethyl acetate extract exhibited antiradical activity of 29.49%, higher than that of n-butanol extract (18.06%) at 100 µg/mL but much lower than that of gallic acid (78.21%).The ethyl acetate extract exhibits better reducing capacity and lipid peroxidation inhibitory activity compared to n-butanol extract but less than all tested standards. Moreover, the ethyl acetate extract was found to have an antiproliferative activity of more than 5-FU (5-fluoro-Uracil) against C6 cells at 250 µg/mL with IC50 and IC75 of 113.97, 119.49 µg/mL, respectively, and good cytotoxic activity against the Hela cell lines at the same concentration. The HPLC-TOF-MS (high performance liquid chromatography-Time-of-flight-Mass Spectrometry) analyses exposed the presence of various compounds, among which Gallic and Chlorogenic acids functioned as major compounds. Conclusions: The two extracts exhibited moderate anticancer abilities and behaved somewhat as average antioxidant agents. Based on the total phenolics and flavonoids contents, as well as HPLC results, it could be concluded that antiproliferative and antioxidant activities depend upon the content of different phenolics and flavonoids.

New Insights on Euphorbia dendroides L. (Euphorbiaceae): Polyphenol Profile and Biological Properties of Hydroalcoholic Extracts from Aerial Parts

“…The extraction method adopted in the present study allowed to obtain a very high extraction yield (13.70–24.21%) with respect to previous investigations (0.42–2.12%) [ 17 ]. Despite the polyphenols extraction from plant material is affected by several parameters such as chemical environment, the extraction process, and solvent polarity, as well as particle size and storage conditions [ 22 ], the results of the present study are in accordance with Ghout et al [ 17 ] showing a total phenols content ranging from 26.54 to 64.75 g GAE/100 g DE with respect to 16.43 and 92.95 g GAE/100 g DE for butanol and ethyl acetate fractions of E. dendroides extract.…”

“…Much research has been carried out in order to highlight the phytochemical profile of different Euphorbia spp. This has allowed the identification of numerous classes of secondary metabolites with marked health properties, including multi-drug resistance modulatory activity, antiproliferative, cytotoxic, antiviral, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activity [ 5 , 9 , 13 , 14 , 17 , 19 , 20 ].…”

“…In this study, the polyphenols profile of hydroalcoholic extracts of aerial parts (flower, leaf, fruit, and branch) of E. dendroides was investigated for the first time. Moreover, to date and to the authors’ knowledge, only one study, which investigated the antiproliferative and antioxidant activities of two fractions (ethyl acetate and butanol) of whole plant methanol/water extract of E. dendroides is currently available [ 17 ].…”

“…along coasts and especially on rocks, cliffs, and arid calcareous soils. The few studies available are mainly focused on its latex with particular reference to terpenoids [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], while to the authors’ knowledge, only one study is currently available on extracts obtained from the whole plant, which investigated the antioxidant and anti-proliferative activity of this species [ 17 ].…”

How Are Medicinal Plants Useful When Added to Foods?

“…Ghout et al [4] describe their work to find biologically-active compounds from two extracts of the plant species Euphorbia dendroides L. They describe several compounds that are interesting antiproliferative and antioxidant antifungal agents, such as chlorogenic and gallic acids as major compounds. The two extracts exhibited antioxidant and anticancer activity.…”