The Faculty of Pharmacy discussed the MSc thesis entitled “Phytochemical investigation of Echinops bannaticus (F: Asteraceae) wildly grown in Iraq (aerial part)” by Mohaiman Majeed Mohammed and the supervisor, Assistant Professor Dr. Amjed Hasseeb Khamas, in the Pharmacognosy and Medicinal Plants Department. The study aimed to find and isolate the chemical components in the plant Echinops bannaticus that grows wild in Iraq (aerial part) which has not been studied before, and to evaluate its cytotoxic activity against lung and colon cancer cell lines. The plant was extracted as a first step, followed by fractionation of the crude extract with different solvents, subjecting it to various preliminary chemical tests to examine its phytochemical contents, then separating many phytochemical components from the plant using HPLC and PTLC, then identifying and characterizing the isolated compounds using several techniques (LC/MS, H1nmr-C13nmr, ATR/FTIR HPLC, and TLC). Additionally, the study included evaluating the cytotoxic activity against lung and colon cancer cell lines of ethyl acetate extract, hexane extract, and chloroform extract, which proved to be effective in inhibiting lung and colon cancer cells. The results also demonstrated the presence of six phytochemical compounds that were isolated, purified, and identified.
