Antifungal, antibacterial and anticancer activities of Ficus drupacea L. stem bark extract and biologically active isolated compounds

Abstract

Ficus drupacea is a widely distributed species with ethnopharmacological applications. Despite the large body of literature on its antioxidant and phenolic contents, several aspects of its biological activities remain unexplored. In this study, the antimicrobial (fungi and bacteria) and antiproliferative activities of crude extracts of the plant’s stem bark and isolated compounds were investigated. Seven biochemical compounds from stem bark extracts including β-amyrin (1), β-sitosterol-3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (2), 5-O-methyllatifolin (3), oleanolic acid (4), epifriedelanol (5), friedelin (6) and epilupeol acetate (7) were isolated and identified. Of all the seven compounds, the compounds 3 and 7 exhibited the highest antifungal and antibacterial activities against screened microorganisms. Aspergillus versicolor and A. ochraceus were the most sensitive microorganisms to the isolated compounds whereas Candida albicans was the most resistant fungus. Compounds 4, 5, and 6 did not exhibit much variation in their antibacterial activities except against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The most sensitive bacterium to isolated compounds was Bacillus cereus whereas the most resistant one was Enterobacter cloacae. However, compounds 4, 6 and 7 exhibited the highest antiproliferative activities against most cancer cells. The study reveal that F. drupacea stem barks contain several compounds that have antimicrobial activities against diverse human pathogenic, food and agricultural microbes as well as anticancer activities against human cancer cells of HeLa, MCF-7, Jurkat, HT-29 and T24. These results may guide the search for new natural products with chemotherapeutic attributes.