The first bioactivity studies of from high altitude Karakoram-Himalayan desert.

Couple of ethnopharmacological surveys in the Indian Ladakh and Pakistani Shigar valleys has reported the medicinal use of against cardiac and gastric disorders that however, remains without scientific rationale or experimental validations. Here, we assess the bio/therapeutic activities of extracts as well as chloroform, ethyl acetate, n-butanol and aqueous fractions. The β-carotene-linoleic acid bleaching and DPPH radical scavenging methods demonstrated a very high anti-oxidative property of chloroform and ethyl acetate fractions compared to others. Cell viability assay (MTT) on human cervical (HeLa), breast (MDA-MB321) and liver (HepG2) cancer cells revealed their differential cytotoxicity, except the chloroform fraction. Of these, the precipitate exerted highest cytotoxicity on HepG2 cells followed by aqueous fraction on MDA-MB321 cells. Notably, the non-cytotoxicity of chloroform fraction coincided with its highest anti-oxidative activity. Further, the chloroform fraction showed marked hepatoprotection (up to 84%) against 3'7'dichlorofluorescin triggered free radicals induced oxidative damage. Also, the hepatoprotective chloroform fraction mildly activated CYP3A4 in HepG2 cells (dual-luciferase assay). Moreover, the extracts and fractions showed differential anti-bacterial and anti-fungal activities. Of these, while was more sensitive to the water-insoluble extract, ethyl acetate fraction showed moderate activity against and . On the other hand, the chloroform fraction showed promising activity against , In conclusion, our data for the first time, demonstrated promising anti-oxidative, hepatoprotective, anti-cancer, anti-microbial and CYP3A4 activating salutations of . This warrants further studies towards isolation and identification of its therapeutically active principles.