Objective:

Croton tiglium L. seeds were studied against colon cancer induced chemically in rats after incorporating silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) but the body has no the ability to discrete silver or silver ions. Therefore, the present study was designed to reveal the biological activities of different C. tiglium L. seeds extracts incorporated with zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs).

Results:

It was found that C. tiglium L. seeds provided with high contents of total protein (27.43 g/100g), carbohydrate (18.29 g/100 g) and lipid (46.31 g/100 g). The chromatographic techniques revealed that concentrations of the predominant compounds increased in all studied extracts (ethanolic, aqueous and petroleum ether) after incorporating ZnO-NPs. The in vitro biological activities showed that the aqueous extract possessed the highest antioxidant and scavenging activities. It exhibited the highest inhibitory effect on α-amylase (41.89%) and acetyl cholinesterase (AChE)(23.00%) in addition to its higher anti-arthritic activity. All the biological activities increased after incorporating ZnO-NPs. It showed the highest cytotoxic activity that increased after incorporating ZnO-NPs against human colon carcinoma (CACO-2) cells. Therefore, this extract was selected for undergoing further studies on CACO-2 cells. The aqueous extract incorporated with ZnO-NPs arrested growth of CACO-2 cells at G2/M and increased percentage of total apoptotic cells and necrosis. The median lethal dose (LD 50) showed that the extracts incorporated with ZnO-NPs were safer than the native extracts.

Conclusion:

The study showed that the aqueous extract was the most active extract that consequently exhibited promising biological activities after incorporating ZnO-NPs.