Extraction, Separation and Purification of Bioactive Anticancer Components from Peganum harmala against Six Cancer Cell Lines Using Spectroscopic Techniques

Abstract

Conventional cancer treatments normally involve chemotherapy or a combination of radio- and chemotherapy. However, the adverse effects of synthetic medicines encouraged the exploration of novel therapeutic medications of a bio-friendly nature. In an effort to explore anticancer compounds from natural resources, crude extract of Peganum harmala (seeds) was fractionated on the basis of polarity, and the fractions were further tested for anticancer activity. Brine shrimp lethality assays and potato disc antitumor assays were used to test each fraction for cytotoxic and antitumor potential. The ethyl acetate fraction was found to be most potent, with LC50 and IC50 values of 34.25 µg/mL and 38.58 µg/mL, respectively. Further activity-guided fractionation led to the isolation of the bioactive compound PH-HM-10 which was identified and characterized by Mass Spectroscopy (MS), Infrared Spectroscopy (IR), Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (1HNMR), Carbon Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (13CNMR) and Heteronuclear Single Quantum Correlation (HSQC). Anticancer aspects in the isolated compound were determined against six human cancer cell lines with a maximum anticancer effect (IC50 = 36.99 µg/mL) against the tested human myeloid leukemia (HL-60) cell line, followed by the human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line (A549) and the breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) with an IC50 of 63.5 µg/mL and 85.9 µg/mL, respectively). The findings of the current study suggest that the isolated compound (Pegaharmine E) is significantly active against the tested cancer cell lines and can be further investigated to develop future novel anticancer chemotherapeutic agents.