Abstract
Medicinal plants have a proven long history for their effective use to prevent and treat diseases. During the recent decades, the modern drug discovery approaches have refocused on traditional medicinal plants because of their higher contribution for providing new drugs, drug candidates, novelty and mechanism insights. Juglans regia L. is very famous for providing precious and medicinal dry fruits which are extensively being used in many parts of the world. In this study four parts of J. regia i.e. fruits, leaves, stem bark and green husk were investigated for metal contamination by using atomic absorption spectroscopy and found that Cd contamination in its fruits, Cu and Mg concentration in all parts of J. regia (fruits, leaves, stem bark and green husk) were critically above the standard permissible limits. Methanolic extracts of various parts for J. regia were screened for antimicrobial activities against twelve different human pathogens which indicated that fruits, leaves, stem bark and green husk were proved to be potential source of antimicrobial activities in comparison to the standard clinical drugs i.e. ciprofloxacin and nystatin which was used as positive control. Whereas, J. regia fruit had potent antioxidant properties with IC50 value of 6.938693 mg mL(-1). Total phenolic contents were ranged from 12.6987 to 31.9685 mg of GA g(-1) whereas, highest flavonoid contents were found in the fruit's extract which was 25.8231 mg g(-1) and lowest in leaves extract of J. regia i.e. 7.2861 mg g(-1). Breast cancer is the top most prevalent cancer in women worldwide and is responsible for nearly 58% of all cancer deaths. The Juglans regia fruits, green husk, stem bark and leaves showed promising antiproliferative activities against MCF-7 breast cell lines. Fruit of J. regia was proved to be more potent as compared to other parts screened with highest antiproliferative activity i.e. GI(50) 1.581722 at conc.1 mg/mL.