Department of Chemistry, College of Science, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, 31982, Saudi Arabia.
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Sohag University, Sohag, 82524, Egypt.
Appl Biochem Biotechnol. 2024 Oct;196(10):7375-7403. doi: 10.1007/s12010-024-04912-8. Epub 2024 Mar 25.
Natural drugs derived from plants are becoming more popular because of their apparent biological efficacy, affordability, and safety. A byproduct of cocoa farms, cocoa pod husk (CPH), is often disregarded yet contains an abundance of phenolic chemicals that have antimicrobial and antioxidant features, which has led to intensive investigation into possible biomedical applications. In order to identify crucial functional groups and phytochemical components, we carefully examined the 80% ethanol and dichloromethane extracts of CPH using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and HPLC. The antibacterial and antioxidant properties of such extracts and their impact on cytotoxicity and α-glucosidase were explored. According to our results, the 80% ethanol and dichloromethane extracts contained 19 and 12 phytochemical components, respectively. Interestingly, at 250 µg/mL, all CPH extracts showed strong antibacterial properties that totally prevented the bacterial growth. At 66.6% and 82.7%, respectively, the ethanol and dichloromethane extracts showed impressive antioxidant and DPPH scavenging capabilities where the ethanol extract showed a substantially lower IC50 value of 35.26 µg/mL than the dichloromethane extract, which had an IC value of 23.88 µg/mL. Furthermore, the α-glucosidase inhibitory effect of the dichloromethane extract was found to be better, as shown by its IC value of 126.5 µg/mL, which was lower than that of the ethanol extract at 151.3 µg/mL. The extracts' compatibility was verified by cytotoxicity tests, which revealed no appreciable alterations in the cell lines. Additionally, novel in silico molecular docking experiments were performed on 25 discovered compounds, providing insight into their possible bioactivity. Broad-spectrum activities of extracts were confirmed by molecular docking investigations aimed at interacting with α-glucosidase proteins. Our thorough analysis makes CPH extracts seem like the excellent candidates for biomedical uses. These results provide new insights into the therapeutic potential of CPH extracts and pave the way for the development of innovative medications and natural remedies.
天然药物来源于植物，由于其明显的生物功效、可负担性和安全性，越来越受到人们的欢迎。可可豆荚的副产品可可荚壳（CPH）通常被忽视，但它含有丰富的酚类化学物质，具有抗菌和抗氧化特性，这导致了对其可能的生物医学应用的深入研究。为了确定关键的功能基团和植物化学成分，我们使用气相色谱-质谱联用（GC-MS）和高效液相色谱（HPLC）仔细检查了 CPH 的 80%乙醇和二氯甲烷提取物。研究了这些提取物的抗菌和抗氧化特性及其对细胞毒性和α-葡萄糖苷酶的影响。根据我们的结果，80%乙醇和二氯甲烷提取物分别含有 19 和 12 种植物化学成分。有趣的是，在 250µg/mL 时，所有 CPH 提取物均表现出强大的抗菌性能，完全阻止了细菌的生长。乙醇和二氯甲烷提取物的抗氧化和 DPPH 清除能力分别达到 66.6%和 82.7%，其中乙醇提取物的 IC50 值低至 35.26µg/mL，明显低于二氯甲烷提取物的 IC50 值 23.88µg/mL。此外，二氯甲烷提取物对α-葡萄糖苷酶的抑制作用更好，其 IC 值为 126.5µg/mL，低于乙醇提取物的 151.3µg/mL。细胞毒性试验验证了提取物的相容性，结果表明细胞系没有明显变化。此外，还对 25 种发现的化合物进行了新的计算机分子对接实验，为它们的可能生物活性提供了见解。通过针对与α-葡萄糖苷酶蛋白相互作用的分子对接研究，证实了提取物的广谱活性。我们的全面分析使 CPH 提取物成为生物医学应用的理想候选物。这些结果为 CPH 提取物的治疗潜力提供了新的见解，并为开发创新药物和天然疗法铺平了道路。
