Phytochemical Profiling, In-vitro Antioxidant and Cytotoxic Effects of Luisia tenuifolia Extracts Against Human Skin Squamous Carcinoma

The present study establishes the phytochemical screening, TLC profiling, in-vitro radical scavenging, and anticancer activities in the successive extracts of whole plant of L. tenuifolia Blume. The preliminary phytochemical screening followed by quantitative estimation of bioactive secondary metabolites revealed higher abundance of phenolic (13.22 +/- 0.21 mg GAE/g of extract), flavonoid (8.09 +/- 0.13 mg QE/g of extract), and tannin (7.53 +/- 0.08 mg GAE/g of extract) contents in ethyl acetate extract of L. tenuifolia which might be attributed to the difference in the polarity and efficacy of the solvents used in successive Soxhlet extraction. Antioxidant activity assessed by DPPH assay and ABTS assay revealed that the ethanol extract exhibited the highest radical scavenging activity with an IC50 value of 18.7 mu g/mL and 33.83 mu g/mL respectively. FRAP assay carried out on the extracts showed the maximum reducing power exhibited by the ethanol extract with a FRAP value of 1162.30 +/- 20.73 FeSO4 E mg/g dw. MTT assay showed that the ethanol extract exhibited promising cytotoxic effect in A431 human skin squamous carcinoma cells with an IC50 value of 24.29 mu g/mL. Collectively, our findings strongly suggest that the ethanol extract and its one or more active phytoconstituent can be used as a potential therapeutic to treat skin cancer.