The Toxicity Evaluation of Lycopodiacea Extracts by Mice Neural Cell and Zebrafish Embryo

Abstract

Many species in the family Lycopodiacea possess highly potential medical substances, notably are Huperzine A of Huperzia serrata and alkaloids isolated from Lycopodium clavatum(α-Onocerin , Lycopodine,..). Various members of this family are found throughout of Vietnam and a few researches on its diversity as well as alkaloid isolation has been conducted, however, there is a lack of toxicology studies on this subject. In this study, three crude extracts (labeled AI.1, AI.2 and AI.3), which come from Lycopodium sp.collected from 3 different regions of Vietnam, have been tested on 2 toxicological models: primary neural cells derived from Swiss white mouse (in vitro) and Zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos (in vivo). Our results show that the all three extracts are relatively low in toxicity, IC50 value on primary neural cell ranging from 800 - 1100 mg/L, while LC50 of fish embryos at 100 - 300 mg/L. AI.2 has the least effect of viability of both cells and embryos compare to the others. This data give the prove showed that the safety using Lycopodium as tradional medicine.