27^th European Diabetes Congress

Biography

Biography: Hilal Zaid

Abstract

Nature is the best cooker of medicines due to the fact that natural products have been optimized to interact optimally with the biological systems through a long natural selection process. Natural products therefore have been a source of therapeutics for millennia, and during the past century, many drugs have been developed from natural sources. We have evaluated the anti-diabetic activity of the aerial parts (except when indicated) of several medicinal plants extracts in vitro namely: Abelmoschus esculentus L. (AE), Allium cepa (bulb, AC), Allium sativum (bulb, AS), Asparagus aphyllus L. (AA), Atriplex halimus (AH), Cinnamomon cassia (CC), Crataegus azarolus L. (CA), Gundelia tournefortii (GT), Nigella sativa (seeds, NS), Ocimum Basilicum (OB), Olea Europea (leaves, OE), Trigonella foenum-graecum (TF), Teucrium polium (TP) and Urtica dioica (UD). Water/ethanol, methanol, hexane and dichloromethane extracts were prepared from the above listed plants and the extracts toxicity and efficacy was tested in L6 muscle cells. Cytotoxic and anti-diabetic properties of the extract were evaluated also in vitro using L6-GLUT4myc muscle cells stably expressing myc epitope at the exofacial loop (GLUT4). GLUT4 translocation to the plasma membrane (PM) was elevated by up to 4 and 7 folds (-/+ insulin) after treatment with AA, AH, CV, GT, OB, TF, TP and UD for 20 h at none cytotoxic concentrations as measured with MTT and the LDH leakage assay. Sweet basil (OB) extracts were the most efficient in augmenting GLUT4 translocation to the PM. GC/MS phytochemical analysis
of GT, OB and TP methanol and hexane extracts revealed tens of compounds (some of them were detected for the first time by our group, Fig.1. These findings indicate that the observed anti diabetic properties of these plants are mediated, at least partially, through regulating GLUT4 translocation.