In Vitro Screening of Seed Extracts of Medicinal Plants for Protease Inhibitory Activity

Abstract

Protease inhibitors (PIs) are deployed in the plant kingdom as storage proteins or peptides, regulators of endogenous proteases, and plant protection agents against insect pests and pathogen attack. In humans, they are identified as chemopreventive agents against a range of cancers and have potential as drug to treat an array of disease associated with aberrant activity of proteases. The present investigation reports PIs activity data from 30 medicinal plants. The screening for PIs activity was done by dot blot assay using X-ray film coated with gelatin. Among screened seed extracts, Albizia lebbeck, Raphanus sativus, Mucuna pruriens, Achyranthes aspera, and Coffea arabica showed high inhibitory activities with trypsin protease. Most of seed extracts exhibited moderate activity, whereas Ocimum sanctum showed moderate to low activity against trypsin. The presence of varied protein content is reported from all seed extracts with highest in A. lebbeck (50.0 ± 3.4 mg/ml). The data produced in the present investigation could be helpful for further exploration of PIs as therapeutic agent.