Chemical Analysis and in Vitro Antiproliferative Potential of Eugenia uniflora L. (Myrtaceae)

Abstract

Natural products and especially medicinal plants, have been extensively studied and have exhibited antiproliferative effects. The species Eugenia uniflora L. (Myrtaceae) is native to Brazil and distributed throughout Australia, East Asia, and the Americas. The leaves are commonly used for the treatment of diarrhea, fever, and hypertension. However, the chemical properties and antiproliferative potential of the extracts remain to be elucidated. In this work, the antiproliferative effects of hydroethanolic (HEE) and dichloromethane (DEE) extracts of leaves from E. uniflora against a panel of human tumor cell lines in vitro were evaluated. Quercetin was identified using an HPLC, and the chemical component β-sitosterol was isolated. The HEE was an inactive extract, whereas the DEE extract showed antiproliferative activity against OVCAR-3 ovarian cells. In a bioassay-guided process, more pronounced antiproliferative effects were found for β-sitosterol isolated from DEE, which demonstrated potent antiproliferative effects against glioblastoma (U-251 cells) and leukemia (K-562 cells). This study contributes to the knowledge of E. uniflora and suggests that β-sitosterol is a potential chemotherapeutic compound.

Study of seasonality and location effects on the chemical composition of essential oils from Eugenia uniflora leaves

“…Specifically, E. uniflora is widely and popularly used due to its medicinal properties (Sobeh et al, 2019). Several pharmacological activities are reported for the essential oils from E. uniflora leaves such as cytotoxic, antibacterial (Figueiredo et al, 2019;Sobeh et al, 2016), antifungal (Siega, 2018;, leishmanicidal (da Silva et al, 2018), molluscicide (Pinheiro et al, 2017), analgesic (Savegnago et al, 2015), antioxidant (Victoria et al, 2012), larvicide (Leite et al, 2009), repellent (Lobo et al, 2019), antiproliferative (Gomes et al, 2020), anti-inflammatory (Falcão et al, 2018), antinociceptive and hypothermic (Amorim et al, 2009). Some of these activities were associated with the leaf oil compounds, such as selina-1,3,7(11)-trien-8-one (36.37 %) and selina-1,3,7(11)-trien-8-one epoxide (27.32%) (dos Santos et al, 2018).…”