Pistacia lentiscus L. edible oil: green extraction with bio-based solvents, metabolite profiling and in vitro anti-inflammatory activity

This study assesses, qualitatively and quantitatively, the performance of ten bio-based solvents to replace hexane for the extraction of oil from Pistacia lentiscus edible fruits. Solvent screening was achieved through theoretical approach using the Conductor-like Screening Model for Realistic Solvation (COSMO-RS) predictions and an experimental protocol based on GC-FID and HPTLC analysis. Unsupervised multivariate analyses were performed on GC-FID and HPTLC data. Experiments corroborated theoretical predictions indicating that MeTHF was the best alternative solvent to replace hexane. Moreover, the obtained extract exhibited a good anti-inflammatory activity, inhibiting by 91.9% NO release in RAW 264.7 macrophages. These findings highlighted the potential of green solvents especially MeTHF in lipid extraction and exhibited that P. lentiscus oil presents a potential anti-inflammatory property and great nutritional value, notably high amount of oleic and linoleic acid, thus encouraging its valorization in food, cosmetic or pharmaceutical industry.