Cytotoxic and Antileishmanial Activities of the Red Sea Soft Coral Sarcophyton glaucum Extract and Some of Its Isolates

Abstract

Truthfully, natural products have been the principal productive source of advancing new drugs. The broad aim of this work was to conduct a phytochemical and biological study of the Red Sea soft coral Sarcophyton glaucum, Family: Alcyoniidae collected from Red Sea at the Egyptian coasts. The phytochemical investigation from the soft coral S. glaucum led to the isolation of ten compounds including: palmitic acid (1), stearic acid (2), (24S)-24-methyl cholesterol (3), batyl alcohol (4), heptadecanoic acid pentadecyl ester (5), sarcophine ( 6), (+)-7α, 8βdihydroxydeepoxysarcophine (7), uracil (8), thymine (9) and a ceramide (10). As cancer is one of the most hazardous factors threatening the human life, in this study the potential in-vitro cytotoxicity of the soft coral S. glaucum extract and three marine isolates were measured against HepG2 and MCF7 using Sulphorhodamine-B (SRB) assay and all of the tested samples showed a good cytotoxic activities against both hepatic and breast cancer. The extract of S. glaucum was tested also against the protozoan parasite Leishmania donovani, using pentamidine and amphotericin B as controls and showed antileishmanial activity.