Biological activities and phytochemical characterization of Sideritis germanicopolitana subsp. viridis and S. libanotica subsp. linearis extracts and extract-loaded nanoparticles

Turgut Taşkın ^1,2* Beyza Nur Yılmaz ² Shalaleh Hasan ² Mizgin Ermanoğlu ² Duygu Taşkın ³ Ismail Senkardes ² Talip Şahin ⁴ Elif Çalışkan Salihi ² Ali Demir Sezer ² Oya Kerimoğlu ² Hatice Kübra Elçioğlu ²

• ¹ Marmara University, Kadikoy, Türkiye
• ² Faculty of Pharmacy, Marmara University, Haydarpasa, Istanbul, Türkiye
• ³ University of Health Sciences (Turkey), Istanbul, Ankara, Türkiye
• ⁴ Adiyaman University, Adıyaman, Adıyaman, Türkiye

The current study focuses on evaluating the biological activity and analysis of phytochemical content of extracts and extract-loaded nanoparticles from Sideritis germanicopolitana subsp. viridis (endemic, SGV) and S. libanotica subsp. linearis (SLL). It was found that the 70% ethanol extracts of SGV and SLL exhibited the highest antioxidant activity in terms of DPPH, FRAP and CUPRAC compared to other extracts. The findings showed that both 70% ethanol extract-loaded nanoparticles obtained from SGV and SLL showed lower DPPH radical scavenging, iron (III) reducing and copper (II) reducing activities compared to crude extracts. It was determined that the 70% extracts of SGV and SLL exhibited a higher potential to inhibit the enzyme urease than other extracts. The anti-urease activity of the nanoparticle loaded with SLL 70% ethanol extract was found to be greater than that of the nanoparticle made with SGV 70% ethanol extract. Furthermore, an analysis of the acetylcholinesterase enzyme inhibition capacity of various extracts from both plants revealed that the 70% ethanol extracts of each plant species had a greater potential for enzyme inhibition than the other extracts. The anticholinesterase activity of the nanoparticle loaded with SLL 70% extract was found to be higher than that of the nanoparticle loaded with SGV 70% ethanol extract. In this study the phenolic metabolites were examined, luteolin (27.44 µg/mg extract) and p-coumaric acid (20.03 µg/mg extract) were found at the highest concentration in the SGV plant while rosmarinic acid (8.70 µg/mg extract), caffeic acid (6.46 µg/mg extract) and p-coumaric acid (4.42 µg/mg extract) were found at the highest concentration in the SLL plant. However, the data demonstrated that the nanoparticles had lesser biological activity potential than crude extracts. The substantial biological activities of the nanoparticles developed as a result of this work are thought to use these formulations suitable for use as antioxidant, antiurease and anticholinesterase medicines in the future due to the benefits of using nanoparticles in the therapeutics such as the controlled release of the active agents and the diminished side effects.