Abstract
Medicinal plants have significant contribution in pharmaceutical industries being producers of compounds utilized as precursors for drug development. A plant of Lamiaceae family;
Pseudocaryopteris foetida
had not been investigated for its biomedical potential. Current research was aimed to investigate phytochemical analysis, cytotoxic potential and antioxidant activity of crude methanolic extract and fractions of
Pseudocaryopteris foetida
(leaves). The preliminary phytochemical analysis of crude methanolic extracts and fractions of
Pseudocaryopteris foetida
revealed that plant is rich in phenolic and flavonoid classes of secondary metabolites while presence of tannin was observed only in crude methanolic extract. The cytotoxicity was determined using brine shrimp lethality test. Different concentrations (25, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 µg/mL) of crude methanolic extract and fractions exhibited dose dependent cytotoxicity. However, The LD
50
for all the extracts was more than 200 µg/mL indicating weak cytotoxic potential of
Pseudocaryopteris foetida.
The antioxidant capabilities of crude methanolic extract and fraction of
Pseudocaryopteris foetida
were analyzed by in vitro bio assays including DPPH, ABTS, Reducing power and phosphomolybdate antioxidant assays using ascorbic acid as standard. The crude methanolic extract showed IC
50
(256.38 ± 0.6 and 314.95 ± 1.1 µg/mL) for DPPH and ABTS respectively, while total antioxidant capacity was calculated as 55.79 ± 0.5 µg/mL for crude methanolic extract of
Pseudocaryopteris foetida
while ascorbic acid indicated total antioxidant capacity of 71.89 ± 2.3 µg/mL. Study concluded that leaves of
Pseudocaryopteris foetida
were the rich source of antioxidant phytochemicals. Based on preliminary investigations further research should be focused to isolate bioactive phytochemicals as leading source of clinical medicines in future.