Sigma Chemical Study

All chemicals used in this study were of analytical grade from Sigma Chemical Co. (St. Louis, MO, USA), BDH (Dorset, England) or Fluka Chemie Co. (Buchs, Switzerland).

2.1. Plant samples and extraction.

Fresh samples of C. longa and O. marjorana were collected from a local market in Cairo, Egypt then dried at 50ºC and reduced to fine particles using Waring laboratory blender (MX-7011G) for 5 min at high speed and then stored in airtight closed bottles for two days before being used for analysis. For aqueous extracts, 300 g dried ground plant material was soaked in 1L distilled water then heated in water bath at 40ºC for 2 hrs and for organic extract, 300 gm plant material was percolated with 1L ethanol and 1 L aceton in glass bottles, those bottles were vigorously shaken at a speed of 300 rpm, overnight. Plant residues were allowed to settle and the supernatant was filtered.

HPLC analysis and identification of compounds.

Based on a combination of retention time (Rt) and spectral matching with those of pure standard, the results were expressed as area % of each identified compound from the total area.

2.7. Screening of antibacterial and antitumor of some identified phytochemicals.

Based on the results obtained by HPLC assay, some phenolic compounds, which were present in high concentration, were selected for evaluation of their antibacterial and antitumor activity. The stock solution of selected compounds in concentration of 50 mg/mL were prepared by dissolving of 50 mg of these phenols in 1 mL sterile distilled water. The antibacterial activity, MIC, MBC and antitumor were applied according to the methods which are mentioned before.

Statistical analysis

Six or more replicates were obtained for each treatment and the data are expressed as standard error of the mean. Comparisons between groups were performed by using paired students t-test on a Statistical Software Package (SPSS). Differences were considered significant, if pvalue is less than 0.05 “p <