Abstract
BackgroundFerula species are reputed in folk medicine for the treatment of a variety of disorders. There have been sporadic reports on the chemopreventive and chemosensitizing activities of some terpenoid coumarin derivatives from the genus Ferula. The present study investigated the cytotoxic activity of 11 phytochemicals (conferone, farnesiferol A, acantrifoside E, mogoltadone, diversin, galbanic acid, herniarin, 7-isopentenyloxycoumarin, umbelliprenin, stylosin and tschimgine) from Ferula species together with a newly synthesized prenylated derivative of curcumin (gercumin II).MethodsCytotoxic activity of phytochemicals was evaluated against ovarian carcinoma (CH1), lung cancer (A549) and melanoma (SK-MEL-28) cell lines using MTT assay.Results and conclusionOverall, moderate cytotoxic activity was observed from the tested compounds with IC50 values in the micromolar range. The highest activity against CH1 and A549 lines was from conferone while stylosin and tschimgine were the most potent compounds against SK-MEL-28 line. In conclusion, the findings of the present investigation did not support a potent cytotoxic activity of the tested phytochemicals against CH1, A549 and SK-MEL-28 cell lines. With respect to previous reports, the beneficial impact of these phytochemicals in cancer therapy may be more attributable to their chemopreventive or chemosensitizing activity rather than direct cytotoxic effects.
Highlights
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions and is still escalating at an alarming rate worldwide
Obesity is associated with chronic activation of low-grade inflammation [3], which is implicated in the pathogenesis of obesity-associated diseases including insulin resistance, type-2 diabetes (T2D) [4, 5] and cardiovascular disease [6, 7]
A numerous of studies has been shown that shortchain fatty acids (SCFAs) inhibit inflammation with focus on butyrate and to a lesser extent on acetate and Propionic Acid (PA), [16]
Summary
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions and is still escalating at an alarming rate worldwide. In Palestine the prevalence of obesity has been shown to be approximately 4. The etiology of obesity and low-grade inflammation is complex and involves intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The colonization of germ-free mice with microbiota derived from obese mice results in significantly greater adiposity than colonization with microbiota from lean mice [12]. Prebiotic diets such as fructans [13] are associated with general better health, including the decrease in body weight, fat mass and the severity of T2D [14,15,16]. The factors that influence the composition and metabolism of intestinal
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