A simple and reliable high-performance liquid chromatographic method was successfully developed for the study of fingerprint chromatograms of extract and fractions from the leaves of Spathodea campanulata (SC) using verminoside (1) and 1-O-(E)-caffeoyl-β-gentiobiose (2) as marker compounds. Antioxidant activity of SC was determined by using free radical of 2,2-diphenyl-1-picryl-hydrazyl-hydrate as an experimental model. The docking study of selected target, tyrosinase and ligands (ascorbic acid, compounds 1 and 2) was performed through Autodock Vina v0.8. Fingerprints of methanol, chloroform, ethylacetate, n-butanol and water extracts could resolve 13, 11, 22, 16 and 5 peaks, respectively. Extract, fractions and compounds 1 and 2 previously isolated from SC displayed remarkable antioxidant activity with radical-scavenging activity ranging from 2.5 to 6.7 μg/mL. In silico study identified compounds 1 and 2 as potential inhibitors of tyrosinase correlating with the observed antioxidant activity in vitro.
Keywords: HPLC; Spathodea campanulata; antioxidant; chromatogram; docking; fingerprint.