2009 Kyung Hee University Press 182 Oriental Pharmacy and Experimental Medicine 2009 9(2), 182-185 www.opem.org OPEM Preliminary antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities of Amoora cucullata extractives Mohammad S Rahman 1 and Mohammad A Rashid 1,2,* 1 Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh; 2 Centre for Biomedical Research, University of Dhaka, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh Received for publication February 22, 2007; accepted January 07, 2009 SUMMARY Amoora cucullata (Meliaceae), a mangrove plant, has folkloric reputation as a medicinal agent in Bangladesh. In this study, the n-hexane, ethyl acetate and methanolic extracts of the stem bark of this plant were subjected to microbiological investigation and brine shrimp lethality bioassay. In case of antimicrobial screening, the ethyl acetate and methanolic extracts appeared to be potent in terms of both zone of inhibition and spectrum of activity showing the average zones of inhibition 8 - 14 mm and 9 - 16 mm, respectively. In the brine shrimp lethality bioassay, the methanolic extract demonstrated highest cytotoxicity having LC of 0.549 µg/ml, whereas the ethyl acetate and n-hexane extract showed LC of 7.943 and 17.180 µg/ml, respectively. Key words: Amoora cucullata; Antimicrobial; Cytotoxicity; Disc diffusion; Brine shrimp lethality bioassay INTRODUCTION Amoora cucullata (Bengali name- Amoor; Family- Meliaceae) is a mangrove plant distributed in the coastal forest of Bangladesh, India, Burma and Malay Peninsula (Kirtikar and Basu, 1980; Boonyapraphat and Chockchaicharaenphorn, 1998; Hassan, 2000). It is a medium sized evergreen tree and typically grows where salinity is low. The flowers of racemose inflorescence are small and white in color which produces fruit with 1 to 3 conspicuous red seeds (Hassan, 2000). The plant is used for the treatment of diarrhea (Chumkaew et al., 2006). The leaves are locally used to reduce inflammation (Basak et al., 1996) and were reported to show CNS depressant activity (Das et al., 2005). Previous phytochemical investigations revealed the occurrences of 1-O-formylrocagloic acid, 3'-hydroxy rocagloic acid, rocaglaol, rocagloic acid, 3'-hydroxyme- thylrocaglate, 1-O-formylmethyl rocaglate, methyl- rocaglate (Chumkaew et al., 2006), fridelin, stigmasterol, β-sitosterol, betulinic acid and caffeic acid (Rahman et al., 2005). We, herein, report the results of our preliminary antimicrobial and cytotoxicity screenings. MATERIALS AND METHODS Plant materials The stem bark was collected from Sundarban, a mangrove forest of Bangladesh in Khulna Division. This plant is very renowned by its local name - “amoor”. Local people helped to collect the plant. The identification of the plant was taxonomically *Correspondence: Mohammad A Rashid, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Dhaka, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh. Tel: +88028612069, 966190073; Fax: +88028612069; E-mail: rashid_phdu@yahoo.com DOI 10.3742/OPEM.2009.9.2.182