Abstract

MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION AND SCREENING OF BIO-ACTIVE COMPOUNDS FROM AQUEOUS EXTRACTS OF CHLORELLA VULGARIS

Tasleema Hamid and M. Boominathan*

Abstract

The discovery of unique classes of natural products from Algae represent an important source of novel anticancerous secondary metabolites. From past two decades, more than 300 nitrogen containing secondary metabolites were identified as therapeutic agents from plants and microorganisms and some are in clinical trials I and II. Chlorella could serve as a major source of bioactive compounds with potential efficacy against Squamous cell carcinoma and Hepatocellular carcinoma. Hence there is a need to exploit other remedies with possibly less known adverse effects and from readily accessible sources like marine medicinal photo-planktons. In the present study, we have concentrated on the preliminary screening, quantitative determination and the qualitative separation of phytochemical compounds from Chlorella sp. The HPLC analysis of the extracts revealed that there were two unidentified components while comparing with methanol. The retention time of two compounds was 3.12 and 3.837 mins. The current study focused on aqueous studies of the Chlorella sp. to identify potential compounds. Further studies should be carried out with identification and testing antiproliferative activity of Chlorella Vulgaris with respect to oral cancer.

Keywords: Hepatocellular carcinoma, cancer, phytochemical analysis, HPLC, Chlorella vualgaris.