Extracts of medicinal plants with natural deep eutectic solvents: enhanced antimicrobial activity and low genotoxicity

What if the future of green chemistry was brewed from everyday primary metabolites instead of toxic chemicals? Meet Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents, a sustainable breakthrough quietly revolutionizing how we capture nature's pharmacy.

Traditional green chemistry often hits a wall when trying to extract healing compounds without harmful chemicals. Enter Natural Deep Eutectic Solvents, or NADES—a clever mix of non-toxic, biocompatible primary metabolites offering a clean alternative to standard water-alcohol mixtures. Researchers put four distinct NADES to the test on two powerful medicinal plants: Sideritis scardica and Plantago major. By tracking total phenolics and flavonoids, the team uncovered a fascinating twist. While a choline chloride-glucose blend crushed the extraction yield for total phenolics, those specific extracts surprisingly showed zero antimicrobial punch.

However, formulations using citric acid-1,2-propanediol and choline chloride-glycerol struck gold, displaying robust activity against stubborn microbes like S. pyogenes, E. coli, S. aureus, and C. albicans. Even better? Safety checks revealed low genotoxicity and cytotoxicity across all four solvents and active extracts.

These findings strongly confirm that NADES can do more than just extract bioactive compounds—they can actually enhance their real-world effects. While more research is ahead to decode how these clever solvents tweak dissolved substances, the pharmaceutical and food industries may have a dazzling new tool on the horizon.

Key Points

• NADES serve as non-toxic alternatives to water-alcohol mixtures
• Specific NADES extracts showed strong antimicrobial activity against pathogens
• All tested NADES and active extracts displayed low genotoxicity