Phytochemical Analysis of Anthocyanins Extracted from the Flowers of Two Dahlia Cultivars and their Cytotoxic Properties

Tetiana Gontova¹, Viktoria Mashtaler¹, Svitlana Romаnova¹, Ludmila Maloshtan² and Mariia Shanaida^3*

¹Department of Pharmacognosy and Nutriciology, National University of Pharmacy, Ukraine.

²Department of Biologyand Pharmacology, National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute", Ukraine.

³Department of Pharmacognosy and Medical Botany, I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University, Ukraine.

Corresponding Author E-mail:shanayda@tdmu.edu.ua

Abstract: Dahlia Cav. is a genus of ornamental plants that belongs to the Asteraceae family. These plants are visually pleasing and contain biologically active substances such as flavonoids, hydroxycinnamic acids, organic acids, and inulin. Among these substances, anthocyanins are especially noteworthy. These water-soluble vacuolar pigments of a glycoside nature have significant health benefits, including antioxidant, antidiabetic, hypocholesterolemic, anticancer, cardioprotective, and hypotensive properties. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the content of anthocyanins by spectrophotometry and the composition by HPLC in the extracts from flowers of two varieties of dahlias ('La Baron' and 'Colorado Classic') grown in Ukraine, as well as to evaluate the cytotoxic effect of these extracts. According to HPLC analysis, among 18 revealed anthocyanins the fower of ‘La Baron’ cultivar had the highest concentration of cyanidin-3-O-arabinoside (31.85%) and cyanidin-3-O-galactoside (23.01%) while ‘Colorado Classic’ accumulated more delphinidin-3-O-arabinoside (39.80%) and Delphinidin-3-O-galactoside (23.15%). Our study also found that malvidin, peonidin, and petunidin played a minor role in the coloration of the flowers. The total amount of anthocyanins was slightly higher in the flowers of the ‘La Baron’ cultivar (1.250%) compared to the ‘Colorado Classic’ one (1.138%).  To determine the toxicity of anthocyanins, it was used an in vitro model of bone marrow cells (BMC) and found that the cytoprotective and cytotoxic activities of the anthocyanins were dose-dependent. Based on these findings, the study concluded that there is potential for developing new herbal medicinal products using dahlia flowers with a significant content of anthocyanins.

Keywords: Anthocyanins; Cytotoxic Effect; Dahlia; Dry Extract; Flowers; In Vitro Study; Spectrophotometry; High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

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