Ecofriendly extraction approach of Moringa peregrina biomass and their biological activities in vitro

Although plants are rich sources of various bioactive compounds that can be employed for the management of numerous diseases, there is a problem with extraction methods. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) utilizing carbon dioxide (CO₂) (SFE-CO₂) has extensively been applied as an alternative green technology, resulting in extracts with higher component selectivity. In the current investigation, SFE-CO₂ was applied to extraction of Moringa peregrina. SFE-CO₂ seems to be efficient for the extraction of phenols and flavonoids, indicating a large number and concentrations of compounds at 25 Mpa. High quantities of 343.58, 317.82, 136.92, and 16.23 µg/mL were associated to chlorogenic acid, rutin, gallic acid, and vanillin at 25 MPa unlike its concentrations at 10 or 40 MPa. Inhibition of Helicobacter pylori was associated to M. peregrina, but at different levels of inhibition, where extraction at 25 MPa provided maximum inhibition zone (26 mm) compared with the obtained inhibition zones 25.3 and 23 mm using the provided extract at 40 and 10 MPa, respectively. The lowest MIC (15.62 µg/mL) was recorded, using the extract at 25 MPa, while the value of MBC at 25 MPa and at 40 MPa was similar (31.25 µg/mL). Extraction of M. peregrina at 25 MPa reflected maximum inhibition of butyrylcholinesterase with less IC₅₀ value (8.42 µg/mL) than that at 40 MPa (13.25 µg/mL) or at 10 MPa (63.71 µg/mL). At concentrations of higher than 250 µg/mL of the extract, the toxicity of the extract at 25 MPa against SK-OV3 (ovarian cancer cell line) was more than 90% with recorded IC₅₀ value of 91.94 ± 0.95 µg/mL. The provided information in the current scientific paper enables further investigations on the separation and characterization of the biological active compounds from the extract of M. peregrina.