Bioactive compounds of Crocus sativus L. and their semi-synthetic derivatives as promising anti-Helicobacter pylori, anti-malarial and anti-leishmanial agents

Abstract

Crocus sativus L. is known in herbal medicine for the various pharmacological effects of its components, but no data are found in literature about its biological properties toward Helicobacter pylori, Plasmodium spp. and Leishmania spp. In this work, the potential anti-bacterial and anti-parasitic effects of crocin and safranal, two important bioactive components in C. sativus, were explored, and also some semi-synthetic derivatives of safranal were tested in order to establish which modifications in the chemical structure could improve the biological activity. According to our promising results, we virtually screened our compounds by means of molecular modeling studies against the main H. pylori enzymes in order to unravel their putative mechanism of action.

• Anti-leishmanial agents
• anti-malarial agents
• Crocus sativus L.
• Helicobacter pylori
• safranal

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Dr. Claudio Farina for providing three clinical isolates of Helicobacter pylori used in this study.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declaration of interest.

This work was supported by Interregional Research Center for Food Safety and Health at the Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro (MIUR PON a3_00359).

Supplementary material available online

Supplementary Tables S1 and 2; Figures S1-3 and Supporting information.