Abstract
Although it has important pharmacological bioactivities, betulinic acid is still obtained by extraction from wood heart and bark and by transformation synthetically. With these methods, less than 3% efficiency is obtained. Our endemic rose species, Rosa pisiformis (Christ.) D. Sosn., which is a new alternative source of betulinic acid and traditionally used for its medicinal properties, was collected from the province of Gümüşhane, its natural distribution, and organs of the plant such as root, stem, leaf and fruit were air diried and pulverizated. The drugs are extracted separately with three solvents (methanol, dichloromethane and hexane) with Box-Behnken optimized extraction method and the amounts of quercetin, rutin, catechin and betulinic, ursolic and oleanolic acids in roots, stems, leaves and fruits are determined with standard substances using HPLC-DAD techniques. According to the Box-Benchen method optimisation data was obtained as 65% ratio of solvent and 5 times maceration with 75 ml of solvents. By the way the highest amount of catechin was found in the leaf (DCM) as 15.61 µg/ml; stem was found to be rich in rutin (28.96 µg/ml) and quercetin (39.90 µg/ml). The amount of betulinic acid in stem (hexane) (11.84 µg/ml) and root (9.32 µg/ml) has been determined for the first time, and their cytotoxic activities were determined mostly in stem also leaves and roots followed this subsequently against prostate and lung carcinoma cells by ABTS-assay.