Pharmaceutical Sciences

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Browsing Pharmaceutical Sciences by Author "Ahmed Mutasem Tawfiq Alkhader"

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    Anticancer, Antioxidant, Antimicrobial, and Enzymes Inhibitory Effects of Terfezia Arenaria from Palestine
    (Al-Quds University, 2023-04-29) Ahmed Mutasem Tawfiq Alkhader; أحمد معتصم توفيق الخضر
    Terfezia arenaria belongs to the Terfeziaceae truffle family and is one of the most important desert truffles in Palestine. It is an edible truffle with many medicinal folks uses in the past and present, so the study was designed to consolidate knowledge about this truffle and to validate the medicinal uses of the natural products. In the beginning, we used a variety of extraction methods including Soxhlet extraction, sonication extraction, and exhaustive extraction, as well as various solvents with varying polarity properties including methanol, ethanol, water, acetone, hexane, dichloromethane and ethyl acetate. We relied on sonication extraction with methanol as a solvent because it yielded the highest extract, whereas other solvents yielded negligible amounts of extract. Qualitative tests were performed to investigate the ingredients of the methanolic extract, which revealed the presence of flavonoids, phenols, glycosides, carbohydrates, and steroids. The flavonoids and phenolic compounds were then determined quantitatively, using Folin-Ciocalteu’s method for phenolic contents and aluminum chloride method for flavonoids. This work also investigated the expected effect of these compounds in addition to the discovery of new effects of the T. arenaria. We tested the enzyme inhibition effect on amylase enzyme, which is naturally present in the human intestine and plays an important role in carbohydrates digestion; inhibiting the enzyme may be useful to reduce the absorbed amount of glucose and thus improve the treatment of diabetic patients, so we measure the absorbance using UV spectrophotometer and higher absorbance means higher inhibition, and we use acarbose which is an antidiabetic drug as a positive control. The other enzyme we tested for inhibition effect is lipase enzyme, which is found normally in humans and other mammals and digests lipids, so inhibiting it may also aid in the treatment of obesity, orlistat used as a reference in this test and using UV spectrophotometer same as amylase inhibition. Another important test we carried was the extraction of antioxidant because oxidative stress is a factor in the progression of many diseases, and a positive antioxidation effect may be beneficial in reducing Alzheimer, dementia, cancer, and many other diseases. In our study we used reducing power assay method to determine the antioxidant activity. The antibacterial activity was tested on different bacterial species, gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, to validate one of the most well-known uses. Cytotoxicity activity was also investigated in order to test the ability to treat cancer cells in vitro, and two different cell lines used, which could be the first step in the discovery of a new lead compound for cancer therapy. In our results we found our desert truffle to have various biochemical compound and good phenolic and flavonoids contents, so this will have positive impact on our results. And also, the results of enzymes inhibition activity were good enough to build on, as it showed good inhibition comparatively with the positive controls. For the anticancer activity there was obvious cell growth inhibition on two different cell lines used, while there was no antibacterial activity.