Search Results (1)

Diabetes Mellitus Type-2 (DM-2) has become a challenging disease worldwide as many young adults are also getting affected by it due sedentary lifestyle and wrong diets. Multiple studies have shown that control over α-amylase enzyme in the gut could be a better approach to treat DM-2. The secondary metabolites that are produced by plants have various biological properties and many are used as drugs. In the current study, we isolated secondary metabolites from acetone leaf and bud extracts of Artemisia pallens Wall ex DC (Family: Asteraceae) and tested them for their porcine pancreatic α-amylase (PPA) inhibitory activity in vitro and in silico. This extract exhibited good PPA inhibition, with IC₅₀ value of 388.05 µg/mL. The IC₅₀ value of Acarbose (a known pancreatic α-amylase inhibitor drug/positive control) was 9.71 µg/mL. Various secondary metabolites that were detected from acetone leaf and bud extract by LC-MS analysis were used for the molecular docking studies using AutoDock 4.2.6. The co-crystallized structure of PPA and acarbose was retrieved from Protein Data Bank (PDB ID: 1OSE). The binding energies of few metabolites were (kcal/mol): isoquercetin (−11.57), cryptochlorogenic acid (−11.17), cirsilineol (−10.24), kaempferide (−9.99), fustin (−9.86), 6-demetroxycapillarisin (−9.82), piperine (−9.45), ergometrine (−9.43), apigenin (−9.38), and artemisinin (−9.27). Acarbose had a binding energy of −17.58 kcal/mol. All the metabolites looked highly promising as α-amylase inhibitors and most of them interacted with PPA via hydrogen bonding with crucial amino acid residues: Asp197, Asp300, and Glu233. Thus, the acetone extract of A. pallens leaf and buds can potentially inhibit PPA (strong amino acid sequence similarity with human pancreatic α-amylase) and hence extrapolation of these inhibitory results could be valid for human pancreatic α-amylase as well. Full article