Irmanida Batubara

Screening antiacne potency of Indonesian medicinal plants: antibacterial, lipase inhibition, and antioxidant activities

Indonesian medicinal plants were screened as potential sources of antiacne agents. The screening methods were performed using antibacterial assay against Propionibacterium acnes, lipase inhibitor assay, and antioxidant assay. The results showed that from 40 plant materials extracted with methanol and 50% ethanol in water, Caesalpinia sappan was the best extract based on the combined activities: antibacterial (minimum inhibitory concentration 0.13 mg/ml; minimum bactericidal concentration 0.25 mg/ml), lipase inhibitory [50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) 120.0 μg/ml], and antioxidative (IC50 6.47 μg/ml). Another prospective extract is Intsia palembanica based on its lipase inhibitory activity (IC50 4.1 μg/ml) and antioxidant activity (IC50 3.87 μg/ml).

Brazilin from Caesalpinia sappan wood as an antiacne agent

In screening experiments for antiacne activity, methanolic and 50% ethanolic extracts of Caesalpinia sappan wood showed the most potent activity out of 28 species of plants extracts. These extracts showed inhibition of Propionibacterium acnes growth, lipase inhibitory activity, and antioxidant activity. In order to isolate the active compound from C. sappan, separation of the extract components was performed by column chromatography and preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Brazilin, protosappanin A, and sappanone B were isolated from methanolic extracts. Brazilin showed better antibacterial activity [minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) = minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) = 0.50 mg/ml] than protosappanin A (MIC = MBC = 1.00 mg/ml) and sappanone B (MIC = MBC > 2.00 mg/ml). The 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) for lipase inhibition was lowest for brazilin (6 μM), which showed strong inhibition compared with protosappanin A (100 μM) and chloramphenicol (677 μM, positive control). The antioxidant activity of brazilin (IC50 8.8 μM) was not significantly different from protosappanin A (9.1 μM) and (+)-catechin (10.2 μM). The antioxidant activity of brazilin and protosappanin A were higher than sappanone B (IC50 14.5 μM). Brazilin is considered to have suffi ciently potent activity for use as an antiacne agent.

Extracellular melanogenesis inhibitory activity and the structure-activity relationships of ugonins from Helminthostachys zeylanica roots

Ugonin J, K, and L, which are luteolin derivatives, were isolated from Helminthostachys zeylanica roots by a series of chromatographic separations of a 50% ethanol/water extract. They were identified using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), ultraviolet (UV) spectra, and ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled to time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-TOF-MS). In this study, the intra and extracellular melanogenic activity of the ugonins were determined using B16 melanoma cells. The results showed that ugonin J at 12.5, 25, and 50μM reduced extracellular melanin contents to 75, 16, and 14%, respectively, compared to the control. This indicates that ugonin J showed a stronger activity than arbutin, used as the positive control. Moreover, ugonin K showed a more potent inhibition with 19, 8, and 9% extracellular melanin reduction at the same concentrations, than that shown by ugonin J. In contrast, ugonin L did not inhibit intra- or extracellular melanogenic activity. Furthermore, in order to investigate the structure-activity relationships of the ugonins, the intra- and extracellular melanogenic activity of luteolin, methylluteolin, quercetin, eriodictyol, apigenin, and chrysin were determined. Consequently, it was suggested that the catechol and flavone skeleton of ugonin K is essential for the extracellular melanogenic inhibitory activity, and the low polarity substituent groups on the A ring of ugonin K may increase the activity.

Effects of Inhaled Citronella Oil and Related Compounds on Rat Body Weight and Brown Adipose Tissue Sympathetic Nerve

Citronella oil is one of the most famous Indonesian essential oils, having a distinctive aroma. As with other essential oils, it is crucial to explore the effects of inhalation of this oil. Therefore, the aim of this research was to elucidate the effects of inhalation of citronella oil and its components isolated from Cymbopogon nardus L. (Poaceae), Indonesian local name: “Sereh Wangi” on the body weight, blood lipid profile, and liver function of rats, as well as on the sympathetic nerve activity and temperature of brown adipose tissue. Sprague-Dawley male adult rats fed with high fat diet (HFD) were made to inhale citronella oil, R-(+)-citronellal, and β-citronellol for five weeks, and the observations were compared to those of HFD rats that were not subjected to inhalation treatment. The results showed that inhalation of β-citronellol decreased feed consumption. As a consequence, the percentage of weight gain decreased compared with that in control group and the blood cholesterol level in the β-citronellol group was significantly lowered. Concentration of liver function enzymes were not significantly different among the groups. In conclusion, inhalation of citronella oil, specifically β-citronellol, decreased body weight by decreasing appetite, without any marked changes in liver enzyme concentrations.

Supervised Clustering Based on DPClusO: Prediction of Plant-Disease Relations Using Jamu Formulas of KNApSAcK Database

Indonesia has the largest medicinal plant species in the world and these plants are used as Jamu medicines. Jamu medicines are popular traditional medicines from Indonesia and we need to systemize the formulation of Jamu and develop basic scientific principles of Jamu to meet the requirement of Indonesian Healthcare System. We propose a new approach to predict the relation between plant and disease using network analysis and supervised clustering. At the preliminary step, we assigned 3138 Jamu formulas to 116 diseases of International Classification of Diseases (ver. 10) which belong to 18 classes of disease from National Center for Biotechnology Information. The correlation measures between Jamu pairs were determined based on their ingredient similarity. Networks are constructed and analyzed by selecting highly correlated Jamu pairs. Clusters were then generated by using the network clustering algorithm DPClusO. By using matching score of a cluster, the dominant disease and high frequency plant associated to the cluster are determined. The plant to disease relations predicted by our method were evaluated in the context of previously published results and were found to produce around 90% successful predictions.

Finding an appropriate equation to measure similarity between binary vectors: case studies on Indonesian and Japanese herbal medicines

BackgroundThe binary similarity and dissimilarity measures have critical roles in the processing of data consisting of binary vectors in various fields including bioinformatics and chemometrics. These metrics express the similarity and dissimilarity values between two binary vectors in terms of the positive matches, absence mismatches or negative matches. To our knowledge, there is no published work presenting a systematic way of finding an appropriate equation to measure binary similarity that performs well for certain data type or application. A proper method to select a suitable binary similarity or dissimilarity measure is needed to obtain better classification results.ResultsIn this study, we proposed a novel approach to select binary similarity and dissimilarity measures. We collected 79 binary similarity and dissimilarity equations by extensive literature search and implemented those equations as an R package called bmeasures. We applied these metrics to quantify the similarity and dissimilarity between herbal medicine formulas belonging to the Indonesian Jamu and Japanese Kampo separately. We assessed the capability of binary equations to classify herbal medicine pairs into match and mismatch efficacies based on their similarity or dissimilarity coefficients using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. According to the area under the ROC curve results, we found Indonesian Jamu and Japanese Kampo datasets obtained different ranking of binary similarity and dissimilarity measures. Out of all the equations, the Forbes-2 similarity and the Variant of Correlation similarity measures are recommended for studying the relationship between Jamu formulas and Kampo formulas, respectively.ConclusionsThe selection of binary similarity and dissimilarity measures for multivariate analysis is data dependent. The proposed method can be used to find the most suitable binary similarity and dissimilarity equation wisely for a particular data. Our finding suggests that all four types of matching quantities in the Operational Taxonomic Unit (OTU) table are important to calculate the similarity and dissimilarity coefficients between herbal medicine formulas. Also, the binary similarity and dissimilarity measures that include the negative match quantity d achieve better capability to separate herbal medicine pairs compared to equations that exclude d.

The Study of Tyrosinase and Antioxidant Activity of Xylocarpus Granatum Koenig Seed Kernel Extract toward Evidence Based Indigenous Knowledge from Togean Archipelago, Indonesia

The tyrosinase inhibitory activity and antioxidant activity of three (3) extracts (methanol, chloroform,and n-hexane) from seed kernel of Xylocarpus granatum Koenig was tested. The tyrosinase inhibitory activity and antioxidant activity was estimated as IC50 values and the content of total phenolics in extracts was calculated as gallic acid equivalent (GAE). The best result of tyrosinase inhibitory ability was obtained in methanol extract in monophenolase activity (IC50 =323.11 ± 9.0 μg/mL that correlated significantly with the total of phenolic content (R2 =0.98, Y= -12.27x + 471.73) and the antioxidant activity have IC50 = 10.61 ± 0.6 μg/mL. We indicate that this methanolic extract of X. granatum seed kernel posseses potency as tyrosinase inhibitor and antioxidant agent. This result has already shown that the indigenous knowledge in utilization of X. granatum seed kernel for lightening skin has been evident.

Metabolomic Studies of Indonesian Jamu Medicines: Prediction of Jamu Efficacy and Identification of Important Metabolites

In order to obtain a better understanding why some Jamu formulas can be used to treat a specific disease, we performed metabolomic studies of Jamu by taking into consideration the biologically active compounds existing in plants used as Jamu ingredients. A thorough integration of information from omics is expected to provide solid evidence‐based scientific rationales for the development of modern phytomedicines. This study focused on prediction of Jamu efficacy based on its component metabolites and also identification of important metabolites related to each efficacy group. Initially, we compared the performance of Support Vector Machines and Random Forest to predict the Jamu efficacy with three different data pre‐processing approaches, such as no filtering, Single Filtering algorithm, and a combination of Single Filtering algorithm and feature selection using Regularized Random Forest. Both classifiers performed very well and according to 5‐fold cross‐validation results, the mean accuracy of Support Vector Machine with linear kernel was slightly better than Random Forest. It can be concluded that machine learning methods can successfully relate Jamu efficacy with metabolites. In addition, we extended our analysis by identifying important metabolites from the Random Forest model. The inTrees framework was used to extract the rules and to select important metabolites for each efficacy group. Overall, we identified 94 significant metabolites associated to 12 efficacy groups and many of them were validated by published literature and KNApSAcK Metabolite Activity database.

Utilization of Anting-Anting (Acalypha indica) Leaves as Antibacterial

Anting-anting (Acalypha indica) plants is a species of plant having catkin type of inflorescence. This research aims to utilize anting-anting as antibacterial toward Streptococcus mutans and degradation of biofilm on teeth. Anting-anting leaves were extracted by maceration technique using methanol, chloroform, and n–hexane. Antibacterial and biofilm degradation assays were performed using microdilution technique with 96 well. n-Hexane extracts of anting-anting leaves gave the best antibacterial potency with minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration value of 500 μg/mL and exhibited good biofilm degradation activity. Fraction of F3 obtained from fractionation of n-hexanes extract with column chromatography was a potential for degradation of biofilm with IC50 value of 56.82 μg/mL. Alkaloid was suggested as antibacterial and degradation of biofilm in the active fraction.

IN VIVO ANTI-HYPERCHOLESTEROLEMIA EFFECT OF INDONESIAN JAMU FORMULA

Indonesia has many Jamu formulas to threat some diseases including for hypercholesterolemia. Aim of this research were to standardize and analyze the effectiveness of Jamu Formula as anti-hypercholesterolemia and see its toxicity to liver function. Jamu Formula in this research consisted of Syzygium polyanthum, Casia alata, and Centella asiatica leaves which were extracted by ethanol 30%, and Curcuma xanthorrhiza rhizome which were extracted by ethanol 70%. This Jamu fomula can inhibit HMGCoA reductase activity in previous study. This study was conducted in animals laboratory of Tropical Biopharmaca Research Center, Bogor, Indonesia. In vivo analysis using Sprague dawley rats fed a high-fat diet for 4 weeks, then treated with Jamu Formula for 2 weeks. Blood collection performed before and after treatment. The results showed that Jamu Formula have a good quality for plant raw material and safe to be used. It had LD50 higher than 5000 mg/kg BW. The Jamu formula dose 360 mg/kg BW can decreased cholesterol level and body weight of rats about1,5 and 2,5 times relative to negative control group. Total cholesterol and LDL level of Jamu formula dose 360 mg/kg BW can decrease to 92.4 ± 5.0 and 25.8 ± 8.6 mg/dL which was not significantly different with normal and simvastatin group. In conclusion, Jamu formula dose 360 mg/kg BW have anti-hypercholesterolemia effect as good as simvastatin group.