Cecropia pachystachya trécul (urticaceae): prospecção científica e Tecnológica, fitoquímica, atividade antibacteriana e citotóxica

Abstract

Cecropia pachystachya Trécul, popularly known as embaúba or torém, belongs to the Urticaceae family. It is used in reforestation projects, treatment of respiratory diseases acting as expectorant and antitussive in whooping cough and asthma besides treating hepatopathies and adjuvant in the treatment of Diabetes mellitus as hypoglycemic. Given its pharmacological potential, the objective was to identify the biological activities of C. pachystachya, through scientific and technological prospection, determine the chemical constituents, functional organic groups, evaluate the antibacterial and cytotoxic activities and also acute toxicity, from ethanolic and methanolic extract of young leaves of samples from the municipalities of Ilha Grande-PI and Paulino Neves-MA. The scientific prospection was performed by consulting the article databases: Web of Science, Scopus and Scielo, from 1991 to 2022, and the technological prospection in the databases: ESPACENET and WIPO. The descriptors used were "Cecropia", "Cecropia pachystachya", "Cecropia AND biotechnology", "Cecropia AND pharmacology" and "Cecropia AND treatment". The chemical constituents were determined by qualitative phytochemistry, while Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) was used for the organic functional groups, using the ATR (Attenuated Total Reflectance) method. For antibacterial activity, the extracts were tested against four strains (Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 14028, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 29213, Staphylococcus epidermidis ATCC 12228), in which the minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations were determined. Cytotoxicity was analyzed by colorimetric test by conversion of MTT to formazan blue. Acute toxicity was determined by the mean lethal concentration (LC50) after 24h of exposure of Artemia salina larvae to the extracts. Brazil was the country that presented the highest number of publications in both Web of Science and Scopus databases for all descriptors. The ESPACENET database, for patents, stood out with the largest number of publications for the descriptor "Cecropia pachystachya". The constituents identified for the species were reducing sugar, condensed or cationic tannins, saponins, flavonoids, and alkaloids. Spectrophotometric analysis indicated the presence of phenolic compounds, alcohols, methyl hydrogens, aryl and vinyl ethers, methylene groups, and simple alkenes. In all tested extracts, the antibacterial tests showed bactericidal potential against strains of S. aureus and S. epidermidis, especially the methanolic extract from Ilha Grande-PI and bacteriostatic against the four analyzed strains. The cytotoxic activity that presented the best result was the methanolic extract from Ilha Grande-PI against the PC3 lineage (prostate) with 70.69% of inhibition of cell growth, with activity considered moderate. The toxicity tests for A. salina showed that the extracts and concentrations used were "non-toxic". Therefore, the methanolic extract of samples from Ilha Grande-PI was the one that showed the best results in the antibacterial and cytotoxic analyses. The chemical constituents found corroborate the biological activities cited for the species, as well as its ethnobotanical application. The results presented show the need for further research on the biological properties and environmental factors that can influence the activity of secondary metabolites.