Phytochemical Studies of the Ethyl Acetate Extract of the Fruit of Piper capense

Abstract

Many plant-derived molecules have shown a promising effect in therapeutics. Among the plantsinvestigated to date, one showing enormous potential is the Piperaceae. The present study aimed toextract the phytochemical compounds in different solvent system in Piper longum, Piper nigrum andPiper cubeba as well as testing their antibacterial and antitumour activity. HPTLC analysis of P. nigrumsample showed six alkaloid bands two alkaloid bands were similar to Piperine standard 1 and 2, theother alkaloid may be piperidine, piperettine and piperanine. P. longum sample contain three alkaloidbands one band was similar to Piperine standard 1, the other may be piperlongumine andpiperlonguminine and no alkaloid band was found in P. cubeba. The anti bacterial activity was testedagainst gram positive and negative organism using agar well diffusion method. High activity was foundin P. nigrum ethanol extract against the organism Salmonella Typhii. The alkaloid piperdine waspurified by refluxion method to check the antitumour activity which shows 51.38% of inhibition at 5μg/ml concentration that conforms the compound piperidine to be used as anticancer drug for furthermechanistic works. © 2010 Academic Journals.