The Genus Solanum: An Ethnopharmacological, Phytochemical and Biological Properties Review

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, the genus Solanum has received considerable attention in chemical and biological studies. Solanum is the largest genus in the family Solanaceae, comprising of about 2000 species distributed in the subtropical and tropical regions of Africa, Australia, and parts of Asia, e.g., China, India and Japan. Many of them are economically significant species. Previous phytochemical investigations on Solanum species led to the identification of steroidal saponins, steroidal alkaloids, terpenes, flavonoids, lignans, sterols, phenolic comopunds, coumarins, amongst other compounds. Many species belonging to this genus present huge range of pharmacological activities such as cytotoxicity to different tumors as breast cancer (4T1 and EMT), colorectal cancer (HCT116, HT29, and SW480), and prostate cancer (DU145) cell lines. The biological activities have been attributed to a number of steroidal saponins, steroidal alkaloids and phenols. This review features 65 phytochemically studied species of Solanum between 1990 and 2018, fetched from SciFinder, Pubmed, ScienceDirect, Wikipedia and Baidu, using “Solanum” and the species’ names as search terms (“all fields”).

In-vitro analysis of free radical scavenging activities and suppression of LPS-induced ROS production in macrophage cells by Solanum sisymbriifolium extracts

“…The FTIR analysis of the leaf extracts of S. sisymbriifolium showed the presence of multiple functional groups such as alcohols, alkynes, alkenes, amines, esters and carboxylic acids, which probably represent different phytochemical classes which include but are not limited to alkaloids, phenols and flavonoids. The compilation of secondary metabolites isolated from S. sisymbriifolium WE extract displayed classes of compounds belonging to amines and carboxylic acid groups, which include alkaloids (solacaproine, solanine, solasodine), poly-phenol (neoligan) and steroids (cilistadiol, cilistol) 34,35 which is consistent with the FTIR results obtained in this study. www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/…”

The Cytotoxic, Apoptotic Induction, and Cell Cycle Arrest Activities of Solanum nigrum L. Ethanolic Extract on MCF-7 Human Breast Cancer Cell

“…Phenolic compounds were claimed to demonstrate several pharmacological activities such as anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, scavenging free radical compound (Chen et al, 2015), antigout (Ningsih et al, 2018), and anticancer through the caspase-mediated proapoptotic pathway and antiangiogenic effects (Carocho et al, 2013). It was reported that several isoflavone compounds of S. nigrum L such as β1-solasonine (fruit), diosgenin (fruit), inunigroside A (fruit), solamargin (whole), γ-solamargine (whole), khasianine (whole), solasodine (whole), solanigroside P (whole), solanigroside A (whole) (Kaunda et al, 2019). The level of isoflavon diosgenin in Solanum nigrum L. fruit was 4,000-12,000 ppm (Dweck AC, 2006).…”

Major challenges and perspectives in the diagnostics and treatment of dermatophyte infections

“…One of the more widely studied compounds in this group with high toxicity to dermatophyte cells, including T. rubrum, are solamargine, solasonine and a-solanine (Fewell and Roddick 1997;Pinto et al 2011). Interestingly, glycoalkaloids are relatively common, as their presence has been demonstrated even in potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) (Fewell and Roddick 1997;Kaunda and Zhang 2019). Cafarchia et al (2002) showed that flavonoids derived from Inula viscose Ait., that is, a plant commonly found in the Mediterranean region, have significant antifungal activity against dermatophytes, even at low concentrations.…”