Phytochemical characterization and bioactivities of different fruit parts of Cupressus sempervirens combined with multivariate analysis

The Cypress “Cupressus sempervirens. L.” is a species of evergreen trees of the Cupressaceous family. The goal of this study was to investigate how three commonly used extraction process [ethanol (EtOH), ethanol 50%, and water] affected the yields, chemical composition, antioxidant capacity, as well as, their biological activities of cones and seeds extracts. The results showed that the hydro-alcoholic extract (EtOH 50%) of seeds has the highest yield rate (21.4%), compared to the other solvents. However, for the cones, the aqueous and hydro-alcoholic extracts showed the highest rate with comparable values (12.7 and 12.0%, respectively). The HPLC–DAD has enabled the identification of eight molecules among them chlorogenic acid (5.5 mg/g dr), and catechin (9.9 mg/g dr) in the cones EtOH and EtOH 50% extracts, respectively. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to correlate the bioactive response with total phenolic content. It was found that the EtOH 50%, showed the highest antioxidant activity (IC₅₀ = 3.1 and 3.6 μg/g dr for seeds and cones, respectively) associated with the highest total phenolic content (TPC) (35.5 and 14.8 mg GAE/g dr for seeds and cones, respectively). Moreover, the same extracts were nontoxic against non-cancer cells (HEK-239), and toxic against cancer cell line (LS274T). They showed a low toxicity which does not exceed 30%, against HEK-239, and a moderate cytotoxicity (around 50%) against LS274T. Taken together, fruit of C. sempervirens has a broad range of potential applications in several fields, such pharmaceutical, medical, and food industries as nutraceutical supplements.