Major chemical constituents from Illicium griffithii Hook. f. & Thoms of North East India and their cytotoxicity and antimicrobial activities.

Illicium griffithii Hook. f. & Thoms is an endemic medicinal plant of North East India found in the Eastern Himalayan region of biodiversity mega centre. Herein, chemical investigation of I. griffithii, afforded five compounds and their structures were determined through extensive use of NMR, HRMS, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The complete proton-proton, proton-carbon coupling network of compound 1 was determined using 1H-1H COSY, HSQC and NOESY NMR experiments. All the compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxic activity by MTT assay and antimicrobial activity by Agar well diffusion method. Compound 1 exhibited significant cytotoxicity activity against Lung cancer (A549) and pancreatic cancer (MIAPaCa2) cell lines with IC50 values of 15.01 ± 2.69 µg/mL and 47.77 ± 2.38 µg/mL, respectively. Further, the compound 1 exhibited good antimicrobial activities against Escherichia coli and Candida albicans with MIC 7.50 ± 0.28 µg/mL and 7.50 ± 0.86 µg/mL, respectively. The other isolated compounds along with the extracts of I. griffithii also displayed moderate anticancer and antimicrobial activities against respective strains. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of isolation of compounds from bark, wood, and leaf along with cytotoxicity and antimicrobial activities of I. griffithii from the North Eastern region of India and could be a potential herbal medicine in near future.

Anticancer and antimicrobial compounds from Croton caudatus Gieseler and Eurya acuminata DC: Two edible plants used in the traditional medicine of the Kuki tribes.

Eurya acuminata DC and Croton caudatus Gieseler are two ethno-medicinal plants used by Kuki community of North East India. From these plants, we have characterized fifteen phytochemicals (1-15) by extensive use of chromatographic and spectroscopic methods. They were also tested for in vitro cytotoxic effects against A549 and MIAPACA2 cell lines and antimicrobial activities against Mycobacterium smegmatis and Candida albicans. All compounds showed moderate activity against the MIAPACA2 cell lines. Compounds tricosan-1-ol (6), octacosanoic acid (7), ß-sitosterol (10) and (E)-dodec-3-en-1-ol (14) exhibited promising activity against A549 cell lines with IC50 of 16.72, 4.5, 4.42 and 4.5 µg/ml respectively. Further, hexatriacontan-1-ol (2) exhibited lowest MIC of 50 µg/ml against C. Albicans and henicosan-1-ol (3) at 25 µg/ml against M. smegmatis. They were also screened through docking analysis against two Phosphatidylinositol-3-Kinase nodal proteins and three feedback loop proteins of cancers. Thus, this study validates their traditional uses as herbal anticancer and antimicrobial agents.