The ethanolic extract and achyranthine from A. aspera showed antiarthritic (Aggarwal and Singh 2006; Neogi et al. 1969; Gokhale et al. 2002; Kothavade et al. 2015), cardiac stimulant (Gupta et al. 1972a), diuretic (Ram and Gupta 1970; Gupta et al. 1972b; Maurya et al. 2006), chemopreventive, antitumor (Jayakumar et al. 2009; Geetha et al. 2010; Subbarayan et al. 2010, 2012), and wound healing activities (Chakraborty et al. 2002; Mondal et al. 2016). The methanolic extract of powdered aerial parts of A. aspera, on oral administration, demonstrated hypoglycemic effects in normal and alloxan-diabetic rabbits (Akhtar and Iqbal 1991; Malarvili and Gomathi 2009), anti-inflammatory (Iwalewa et al. 2007; Vetrichelvan and Jegadeesan 2003; Vijaya Kumar et al. 2009; Bhosale et al. 2012), antileprosy (Tripathi et al. 1963; Ojha et al. 1966; Ojha and Singh 1968), anti-obesity (Mangal and Sharma 2009), bronchoprotective activities (Charyulu 1982; Saad et al. 2002; Goyal and Mahajan 2007), and induced hyperlipidemia in male Wistar rats (Latha et al. 2011), and antimicrobial activity (Chakraborty et al. 2000; Suresh Kumar et al. 2003; Rahaman et al. 1996).
The ethanolic extract of A. bidentata was showed hepatoprotective (Dange and Phadke 1989), antioxidant activity against 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) model (Suresh Kumar et al. 2008; Edwin et al. 2008; Nehete et al. 2009; Upadhya et al. 2015), hemolytic activity (Sun 2006), and treatment of arthritis in traditional Chinese medicine and possesses anti-inflammatory properties (Xu et al. 2017). A. bidentata root extract treatment improves bone biomechanical quality and shows osteoprotective effects (He et al. 2010; Zhang et al. 2012; Wang et al. 2017) and metastatic chemoprevention property (Jiang et al. 2017).
2.3.2 Culture Conditions
Plant cell culture technology is considered as an alternative methodology for the production of secondary metabolites of pharmaceutical importance due to high efficiency and low cost (Rout et al. 2000; Verpoorte et al. 2002; Karuppusamy 2009; Filova 2014). Maximum production of callus was achieved from a combination of 2,4-D and 1-naphthalacetic acid (NAA) for estimation of secondary metabolites (Sen et al. 2014). The cell of A. bidentata, when grown in MS medium with supplementation of NAA and 6-benzyladenine (6-BA), grew rapidly, yielding a maximum quantity of 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) after 24 days. When cells of A. bidentata were exposed to methyl jasmonate for six days, it was found that total production of 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) was reached maximum to 2.6-fold higher than control (Wang et al. 2013). The four Agrobacterium rhizogenes strains (MTCC 2364, NCIM 5140, A4, and ATCC 15834) were used for establishment of hairy roots from different explants (young leaf, hypocotyls, cotyledon, and stem segments) of A. aspera. Hairy roots were cultured on the Murashige and Skoog (1962) suspension medium supplemented with 30 g/l sucrose, inducing the highest biomass accumulation and synthesis of phytoecdysteroid 20-hydroxyecdysone (John et al. 2017).
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