Abstract
Santolina chamaecyparissus is an aromatic medicinal plant belonging to Asteraceae family. The current study was aimed at optimizing the conditions for the production of Santolina chamaecyparissus essential oil (EO)-in-water nano-emulsion (SCO-NE). The essential oil (SCO) was extracted from the aerial parts of plants collected from Huraymila City, and the chemical constituents were identified with GC-MS method. Optimization of SCO-NE formulation was performed with Box-Behnken statistical design (BBD) with respect to the impact of indepen-dent manufacturing variables on two responses: globule size and polydispersity index (PDI). The antibacterial activity of SCO-NE was evaluated using the microdilution broth method, whereas 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was used to determine its cytotoxic effect. The major components were identified as trans-p-mentha-2,8-dienol (54.00%), beta-cymene (10.16%), trans-pinocarveol (6.22%), alpha-phellandrene (3.74%), pinocarvone (2.86%), borneol (2.09%) and cis-jasmone (2.02%). The optimized formu-lation of SCO-NE with minimum globule size of 15.98 & PLUSMN; 0.05 nm and PDI of 0.1 & PLUSMN; 0.02 was achieved using 0.8% SCO, 0.44% Span 20 (S20) and 11.25% Tween 80 (Tw80). The antibacterial effect of SCO-NE was more effective against all tested bacterial strains than the pure EO (p < 0.05). In addition, SCO-NE exerted more potent anti-cancer activity against MCF-7 and HepG2 cancer cells than the standard drug gemcitabine (GM) (p < 0.05), whereas Caco-2 cells treated with SCO-NE showed potent susceptibility similar to that of the GM-treated group (p > 0.05). In conclusion, the formulation of essential oil nano-emulsion led to enhanced antibacterial and anticancer activities at a low concentration of oil.