Abstract
Cytotoxic and antioxidant activities of the aerial part of Euphorbia balsamifera were evaluated to isolated the most active compounds. The highest antioxidant activity was observed for total ethanol extract and ethyl acetate fraction with IC50 of 20 mu g/ml and 31.25 mu g/ml respectively. The cytotoxic activity for the plant fractions against three human cancer cell lines, HePG2, HCT116 and MCF7 exhibited to significant activity with low cytotoxicity against normal cell. The highest activity was observed for chloroform fraction against HePG2 with LC50 of 62.5 mu g/ml while hexane fraction exhibited to LC50 of 59.7 mu g/ml against MCF7 where the latex showed the lowest activity against MCF7 with LC50 of 89.6. Isolation and structure determination from ethyl acetate leads to the identification of a new phenolic compound, 4-hydroxyphenethyl 4-hydroxybutanoate (1) along with three known secondary metabolites, 3 beta-cycloartanol (2), 1-(2,4-dihydroxy-6-methoxyphenyl) ethanone (3), and glutanol (4) for the first time from Euphorbia balsamifera. Structure elucidation was accomplished mainly by NMR spectroscopic and mass spectrometric methods.