Isolation, antimicrobial and anticancer activity of compounds from <i>Ficus platyphylla Del</i>. stem bark

Ficus platyphylla Del commonly known as Gamji in Hausa is a medicinal plant used in Northern Nigeria. This research aimed at investigating the medicinal efficacy of stem bark of F. platyphylla in an attempt to isolate the possible bioactive compound(s). Thus, the powdered stem bark was dissolved in methanol for three days with constant stirring to afford a crude extract. This was fractionated by increasing the polarity of solvents. Preliminary phytochemical screening of the fractions using standard procedures was carried out. This was followed by the determination of zones of inhibition of growth of some bacterial and fungal species using agar diffusion method. The most active fractions were evaluated for minimum bactericidal concentration, antifungal activity. Anticancer activity of the fractions was tested against Huh7it cell. Gravity column chromatography was performed on ethyl acetate fraction using gradient solvent elution methods. The results of the investigation showed that there were some secondary metabolites in the fractions. Among microorganisms tested, aqueous-methanol fractions exhibited the highest zone of inhibition against S. aureus. The lower MIC value (125 mg/mL) was exhibited by methanol fractions. The fractions show no zone of inhibition against any fungal species. The anticancer activity showed that aqueous methanol fraction gave negative values implies proliferations of the cancer cells. Column chromatography led to the isolation of 13,27-cycloursan-3-ol, acetate, which was characterize using FTIR, 1HNMR and 13CNMR .