Virola plants from colombian amazon: LC-DAD and LC-MS-based chemical profiling and antileishmanial and cytotoxic activities

Members of genus Virola are well-known by Amazonian native people due to their medicinal properties. Virola is one of the most important genera of the Myristicaceae family. In Colombian Amazon, twenty one species can be found. We selected to investigate the LC-MS-based chemical profile and antileishmanial activity of three taxa (V. carinata, V. elongata and V. peruviana). Leaves, wood and bark of test Virola plants were collected in Guaviare, Colombia, dried, pulverized and subjected to maceration process with ethanol. Phytochemical profile was determined by measuring total phenolic and total flavonoid and by LC-DAD and LC-MS analysis of the resulting nine extracts for comparative drives by chemometrics through principal component analysis (PCA). In order to explore the effectiveness and security of the extracts as parasitocide agents, extracts were then tested against extracellular Leishmania panamensis parasites (promastigotes) and two cell lines (J774 murine macrophages and THP-1 monocytes), respectively. High contents of total phenolics (> 20 mg gallic acid equivalents/g DE) and total flavonoids (> 5 mg quercetin equivalents/g DE) were found. In addition, different chromatographic techniques resulted in the isolation of a novel flavonoid from the ethanolic extract of V. carinata, whose chemical structure was elucidated by spectroscopic methods. The chemical characterization of the other ethanolic extracts was achieved with LC-DAD and LC-MS techniques, using the isolated compound from V. carinata as standard. All ethanolic extracts were very rich in flavone-like compounds, indicating that this kind of phytoconstituents is possibly responsible for the extracts' antileishmanial activity (EC₅₀ < 50 µg/mL). Additionally, extracts exhibited no cytotoxic activity against J774 and THP-1 cell lines (IC₅₀ > 500 µg/mL) and therefore showed excellent selectivity indexes (SI > 5). PCA score plots revealed good correlations between chemical profile and biological activity.