Extraction of bio active compound from acacia seyal gum and in vitro evaluation of antitumor activity against leukemia cell lines

Abstract

The current chemical treatment for leukemia is not effective and often has negative health consequences. Alternative herbal medicine is rising in popularity because it is more compatible with the human body and has fewer side effects. While alternative herbal therapies have been shown to reduce symptoms in traditional medicine, many of them have not been scientifically validated. As a result, it is critical to keep looking for ways to improve its efficiency against cancer cells. Due to their minimal or close to zero toxicity to normal tissues, herbal therapies contain several phytochemicals that have safe anticancer activity comparable to standard cancer treatments. Acacia seyal gum (AS), known as arabic gum, is a well-known traditional medicinal therapy with various restorative characteristics. In this study, the yield of AS extract was optimised using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) followed by chemical characterization of a bioactive compound for the last yield, and then the therapeutic potential of AS crude extracts against leukemia cancer cells was investigated in vitro. RSM optimized the AS extraction using Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (UAE), considering the effect of three parameters on the yield of AS extracts, namely time, temperature, and solid-liquid ratio, and applying the optimum conditions suggested by previous studies. Raman spectroscopy (RS), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and GC-TOFMS analyses were used to characterize AS crude hydroethanolic extract bioactive components. The anti-leukemic activity of AS crude extracts was investigated in vitro against tumoral Jurkat, T-cell ALL, and K562 leukemia cancer cell lines, as well as non-tumoral WIL2NS cells. The optimum extraction conditions resulted in a yield of 75.89 % after 45 min of extraction at a temperature of 40°C and a solid/liquid ratio of 1:25g/mL. Many phytoconstituents, such as polyphenols, tannins, saponins, coumarins, flavonoids, and terpenoids, were discovered through phytochemical screening for the optimized extract. Anticancer compounds were found in crude AS after GC-TOFMS analysis, such as Lycopene, Oleanolic acid, and carotene. The cytotoxicity assays of AS and Taxol revealed that both treatments inhibited the growth of K562 and Jurkat T cancer cells and exhibited the lowest IC50 for K562 and Jurkat T cancer cells (IC50=10g/ml and IC50=5.11g/ml respectively), while it showed an insignificant inhibition effect on WIL2NS cells (IC50=80 g/ml). The AS crude ethanol extract showed a low IC50 value. In conclusion, these findings show that AS could be a good candidate to be developed into a new natural anticancer agent and to tap the potential benefits of using AS as a novel treatment approach for leukemia.