Cytotoxic and Antioxidant Activity of Four Cousinia Species of Stenocephalae Bunge. Section ^†

Abstract

Therapeutic efficacy and low toxicity makes natural compounds important for anticancer studies. Cousinia, is one of the most diverse genera of Asteraceae family. There are 6 sections of this genus in Turkey. One of them is Stenocephalae Bunge. Section including the species C. davisiana, C. foliosa, C. ramosissima and C. stenocephala. In this study, the antioxidant and cytotoxic effects of species were evaluated. Activity tests were carried out on methanol extracts of these plants. As a result, for antioxidant activity, C. davisiana and for cytotoxic activity C. stenocephala were selected as the guide plants due to their potent activity and sub-extracts were prepared, more active sub-extracts were also identified by activity tests. Bioactivity guided fractionations of extracts were evaluated on A549, Beas-2b and Colo205 cell lines and were carried out on dichloromethane sub-extract (IC50 = 130 μg/mL on CoLo 205 cell line) of C. stenocephala and n-butanol sub-extract of C. davisiana. LC-MS/MS and NMR results revealed that the n-butanol sub-extract was found to be rich of with flavonoids and phenolics, dichloromethane sub-extract was found to be rich of with steroidal and triterpenic compounds.

Keywords: cousinia; asteraceae; cytotoxicity; antioxidant; A549; beas-2b; colo205; NMR; LC-MS/MS