Chemical composition and evaluation of the antifungal and cytotoxic potential of Cordia superba and Cordia glabrata essential oils

• Grant number: 23/15348-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2024
• End date: March 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Organic Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: Virginia Claudia Paulino Silva
• Grantee: Izabela Fernanda Francisco
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Agrárias (CCA). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). Araras , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Brazil has countless botanical families that produce an invaluable source of biomolecules. From this perspective, research related to essential oils has gained increasing prominence, providing a great opportunity to develop sustainable processes for exploring biodiversity. With great importance in the world market, essential oils have great biotechnological and therapeutic potential, especially in studies involving alternative replacements for synthetic products that have harmful effects on human health and the environment. Considering these aspects, this proposal is focused on investigating the variability, as well as the similarity of the chemical composition of the essential oils of the species Cordia superba and Cordia glabrata. In addition to the chemotaxonomic contribution, we intend to evaluate the potential of these essential oils in biological models of cytotoxic and antifungal activity. The essential oils from fresh leaves of C. superba and C. glabrata will be extracted by hydrodistillation and analyzed by combining the techniques of gas chromatography coupled to a flame ionization detector (GC-FID) and gas chromatography coupled to spectrometry of masses (GC-MS), for identification and quantification of its components, in analyzes based on the correlation between retention indices and mass spectra, in comparison with those stored in the database of the Wiley 7, NIST 08 and FFNSC 1.2 systems and fragmentation patterns provided by the literature. In biological assays, cytotoxic activities will be evaluated in cell lines of cervical adenocarcinoma (HeLa), breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7), glioblastoma (U-251MG) and human lung fibroblast (GM07492A) and antifungal activities in six species of Candida (C . albicans SC 5314, C. glabrata ATCC 2001, C. parapsilosis ATCC 22019, C. krusei ATCC 6258, C. tropicalis ATCC 13803 and C. orthopsilosis ATCC 96141). In these biological models, essential oils will be evaluated by comparison between species, in varying concentrations and according to the protocols that will be adopted.