Research Journal of Pharmacognosy
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Winter 2014

I am very delighted to announce the launch of Research Journal of Pharmacognosy (RJP), a newborn peer reviewed scholarly Iranian journal dedicated to all fields of natural products and medicinal plants. The science of pharmacognosy as a major discipline of pharmacy is like a bridge between applied pharmacology and medicinal chemistry of natural products on one hand and herbal pharmaceutical technology and clinical research of botanicals knowledge on the other. It has been progressed to phytochemistry, ethnopharmacology, medical ethnobotany, plant biotechnology, herbal medicine, traditional medicine, zoo-therapeutics, marine pharmacognosy and industrial and metabolomic pharmacognosy. All of those areas may potentially lead the pharmaceutical and medical world to new natural sources for future drug discovery [1,2]. Although the term of pharmacognosy or studying of medications of natural sources as a multidisciplinary science was used for the first time in Europe more than 200 years ago, it seems that the most significant and influential physicians and scientists of Iran like Rhazes, Avicenna and Jorjani created the same meaning knowledge, namely as “Elm-ol Adwieh” for such kinds of sciences around 1000 years ago. Those pioneers made important contributions to pharmacy and medicine [1,3,4]. There are well-established networks and herbal industries inIranas well as a technical treasure of botanical and herbal medicine professionals. The postgraduate PhD degrees in pharmacognosy in Iranian schools of pharmacy were started from a quarter-century before. Hopes to find more accomplishments especially in the natural products chemistry and pharmacology disciplines are flourishing now. At this moment, several enthusiastic researchers who are doing their research activities related to natural products fields have been inspired by the treasures of Traditional Iranian Medicine. They have made significant contributions to the international scientific community. The potential hegemonic position of Iran as a multi-cultural and multiethnic country in the Persian Gulf region, its considerable advances through education and standard training of pharmacognosy, traditional medicine and medicinal plants, the rising number of Iranian universities of medical sciences and research centers, different climates and geographical conditions of Iran that lead to growth of numerous plant species, increasing use of natural remedies and phytomedicines as well as long and prolific history of medicinal plants in Iran are the facts that show Iran’s potential of growth and development of pharmacognosy. However there is no specific Iranian journal which covers the subject of pharmacognosy as a vast and important knowledge of contemporary Iranian medicine and pharmacy. Pharmacognostical studies are accelerating in Iran and a unique journal is very important to this acceleration and may lead to a better scientific productivity in this field [1,3-5]. To fulfill that need, it is with great pleasure that “The Iranian Society of Pharmacognosy” publishes the “Research Journal of Pharmacognosy” with efforts of a team consisting of our brilliant editorial board, dynamic reviewers and staffs and our talented publisher. The Iranian Society of Pharmacognosy invites all interested researchers from the different areas of the natural products and medicinal plants to consider submitting their relevant high quality manuscripts to RJP. We hope you enjoy reading our first issue and we welcome your contributions and opinions that help us to make the scientific roadmap of the newborn RJP.

In this study, the relationship among four species of Polygonum (including P. hyrcanicum (three samples), P. persicaria, P. avicular, and P. hydropiper) was investigated by GC profiling. Furthermore, the major compounds of the ethylic ether extract of P. hyrcanicum were identified by GC/MS as: α-bisabolol (17.5%), cedrol (15.9%), sesquisabinene hydrate (13.0%), α-elemol (10.5%) and trans-longipinocarveol (10.1%). All the identified compounds were sesquiterpenes and no monoterpene, fatty acid and/or hydrocarbone were detected in the extract. Chemical distances among the mentioned species were calculated in order to construct the dendrogram of closely related samples. Results indicated that the distance between two samples of P. hyrcanicum was considered to be short and their GC profiles were quite similar to each other and also there was a close relationship between the two samples of Polygonum with P. avicular. P. hydropiper was observed far from the two samples of P. hyrcanicum in comparison to other samples. Interestingly, P. hyrcanicum, gathered from Veresk, had no close relationship with other pairs of P. hyrcanicum.The results of this study support the phylogenetic relationships among these Polygonum species which was previously reported.

Elicitation with middle-viscous chitosan (30 mg/50 mL) significantly stimulated silymarin synthesis in Silybum marianum hairy root cultures. The root cultures established by infection with Agrobacterium rhizogenes AR15834 showed a potential for production of silymarin. Elicitation with medium molecular weight of chitosan (0, 5, 10, 20, and 30 mg/50 mL) was used in order to improve silymarin production. Total silymarin increased about 5.26-fold after 96 h of treatment with 30 mg/50 mL chitosan. Dry weight of the hairy roots reached the highest point (0.530 and 0.535 g) after 96 h in presence of 20 and 30 mg/50 mL chitosan, respectively. Five different flavonolignans were isolated; taxifolin, silychristin, silydianin, silybin and isosilybin) 0.133, 0.200, 0.120, 0.041 and 0.056 mg/g dry weight, respectively). 30 days old hairy roots were treated by 30 mg/50 mL chitosan in different times (12, 24, 48, 72, 96 and 120 h). The amount of silymarin accumulation significantly increased (0.705 mg/gDW) in hairy roots after 96 h treatment. These observations suggested that the medium molecular weight of chitosan could be elicited by S. marianum hairy root cultures that lead to the higher production of silymarin. These results correlated with the culture time, and the biosynthesis which reached to a maximum of 0.705 mg/gDW by 96 h after culture. (2.9-fold higher than the control).

Inflammation is a part of the non-specific immune response which occurs in reaction to any type of injury. Medicinal mushrooms have had application in various disorders including cancer, liver injuries, inflammation and diabetes. In the present study, the anti-inflammatory effects of the aqueous extracts of medicinal mushrooms (Fomes fomentarius, Ganoderma applanatum and Trametes hirsuta) were evaluated using carrageenan method. In addition, total polysaccharide, total phenolics contents and the radical scavenging activity of the extracts have also been examined. Mushrooms were extracted with distilled water in 100 °C for 4 hours and then the extracts were freeze dried. Indomethacin was considered as the positive control in the anti-inflammatory evaluation. Polysaccharide contents of F. fomentarius, G. applanatum, and T. hirsuta extracts were assessed as 53.3±0.2, 31.7±0.03, and 19.1±0.6 glucose equivalent µg/100 µgEXT and total phenolic contents of them were successfully revealed as 9.9±0.2, 8.2±0.1, and 8.8±0.2 µgGAE/100 µgEXT, respectively. Furthermore, the IC50 values for F. fomentarius, G. applanatum, and T. hirsuta extracts in DPPH assay, were calculated as 90.9, 108.6, and 908.3 µg/mL, respectively. The results of the experiment showed that the extracts possessed potent anti-inflammatory effect which was comparable to indomethacin.

Securigera securidaca (L.) Degen & Dorfl grows in different parts of Iran. The seeds of the species are used in Iranian folk medicine as an anti-diabetic agent. Many studies have established hypoglycemic effects of amino acids and in the present investigation, amino acids of Securigera securidaca seeds have been evaluated. The ground seeds were extracted using petroleum ether, hot ethanol and ethanol 50%, respectively. ethanol 50% extract was chromatographed over cation exchanging resin and the resulting amino acid fraction was subjected to HPLC after OPA derivatization and the amino acids were identified by comparing to standards. The results evidenced the presence of 19 amino acids in the plant extract including alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, citrulline, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, serine, threonine, tyrosine and valine. Considering the role of some amino acids in diabetes the above amino acids could be noted as hypoglycemic agents of the plant seeds but further studies are necessary.

Iran has 1260 km of coastline that borders the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea in the northwest Indian Ocean. Marine algae are one of the natural resources in the marine ecosystem which produce a wide range of new secondary metabolites with various biological activities that play an important role in the pharmaceutical care. In this study the cytotoxic activity of 28 marine algae of Chabahar coast was assessed against 5 cell lines including MCF-7, HepG-2, A-549, HT-29 and MDBK, through MTT assay. The methanol extract of the algae did not show cytotoxicity against any of the tested cell lines up to 100 μg/mL concentration, except for Jania adhaerens (IC50 85.03 µg/mL) against MCF-7 cells.

Factors such as oxidative stress and reduced acetylcholine level have been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology and recently there has been a trend towards natural product research to find potential sources of antioxidants and acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in the plants kingdom. Centaurea is a genus with about 500 species world wild, many of them have shown to possess biologic activity; Centaurea albonites, C. aucheri and C. pseudoscabiosa are three species which little investigation has been carried out about their biological properties. In the present study, the antioxidant and acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity of the above mentioned species have been evaluated. The ability of the total extract and methanol fraction of the plants to scavenge free radicals has been assessed through DPPH radical scavenging assay, and the acetylcholinesterase inhibitory property has been evaluated by Ellman method. The total extract of all species exhibited moderate antioxidant activity whereas the extracts of C. pseudoscabiosa showed the strongest antioxidant property; its total extract also demonstrated the highest acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity among the evaluated samples (19.2% inhibition). The results suggest the species as potential sources of natural antioxidants which could be focused in future studies of Alzheimer’s disease.

Evaluating the in vitro antifungal activity of Phlomis lanceolata, Rhynchocorys elephas, Otostegia persica and Eremurus persicus, four species used in Iranian Traditional Medicine, has been performed on the clinical isolates of the pathogenic fungi Aspergillus fumigatus, A. flavus, Trichophyton mentagrophytes, T. rubrum, T. verrucosum, Microsporum canis, M. gypseum and Epidermophyton floccosum and the yeast Candida albicans. The susceptibility tests were done by agar disc diffusion method and the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) of active extracts and sub-fractions were measured using the method of National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS). Among the investigated species, P. lanceolata sub-fractions were found to have fungicidal activity. The MIC and MFC was found to be considerable in petroleum ether, chloroform and ethyl acetate fractions (100 and 200 mg/mL) against the studied fungi and the yeast Candida albicans. The species appears to be a promising remedy for fungal based diseases, yet further studies are necessary.

The antioxidant properties of Ruta graveolens L. were evaluated by two different methods; free radical scavenging using DPPH and inhibition of lipid peroxidation by the ferric thiocyanate method. The IC50 value of the methanol extract in DPPH inhibition was 200.5 μg/mL which was acceptable in comparison with BHT (41.8 μg/mL). In thiocyanate method, the plant extract demonstrated activity as much as BHT in prevention of lipid peroxidation. Increasing the temperature during extraction, significantly decreased the extract power in inhibition of DPPH radicals. The storage time and temperature had no effect on lipid peroxidation inhibition.