Phoenix dactylifera L. (date palm) fruit extracts and fractions exhibit anti-proliferative activity against human pancreatic cancer cell lines

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer has a very poor prognosis due to its high resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs, late diagnosis, and early metastasis, making it the most aggressive and lethal cancer. Hence, there is a pivotal need to find new effective preventive and curative treatments. In this study, extracted and fractions obtained from date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) fruit using ethyl acetate and n-butanol as solvents. The prepared date fruit extracts and fractions were pharmacologically evaluated on three pancreatic cancer cell lines: PT45P1, PANC-1, and SUIT-2. Specific extracts demonstrated strong anti-proliferative activity. In particular Bu-IV was the most active n-butanol fraction tested at 500 μg/mL. Moreover, sub-fractions obtained from the ethyl acetate extract inhibited pancreatic cancer cell proliferation, especially fraction EA-III-2 tested at 50–150 μg/mL. These findings suggest that date fruit extracts contain nutraceuticals with potential therapeutic value in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Future work will be focused on isolation and identification of the active compounds and explore their mechanisms of action.

Keywords

• Date palm fruit
• Maceration extraction
• Pancreatic cancer
• Phoenix dactylifera L.
• Proliferation