Composition and Cytotoxic Activity of Essential Oils from Croton matourensis and Croton micans from Venezuela

The chemical composition and cytotoxic activity of the essential oils extracted from leaves of Croton matourensis and flowers and leaves of Croton micans were investigated. GC-FID and GC-MS analysis revealed that forty six compounds comprised 95.5 % of C. matourensis essential oil, with the main components being fenchyl acetate (19.5%), methyleugenol (14.2%), isoelemicine (11.3%), elemicine (7.6%), spathulenol (6.9%) and valencene (5.8%). In the analysis of C. micans oils, 63 compounds that comprised 98.9% were identified from the flower oil, the principal being fenchyl acetate (41.6%), alpha-caryophyllene (12.6%), beta-cubebene (5.0%), beta-caryophyllene (5.5%), alpha-cubebene (5.3%), beta-elemene (4.7%) and valencene (4.6%). The oil from leaves gave fenchyl acetate (25.3%) alpha-caryophyllene (20.7%), alpha-selinene (12.8%) and beta-bourbene (9.3%) as major constituents. The cytoxicity of these oils was screened by the MTT method against three human tumour cell lines and primary culture of human dermis fibroblasts (normal control cells). The results indicate that the oils have a moderate cytotoxicity against LoVo (colon carcinoma), X-17 (colon carcinoma), HeLa (cervical cancer), and control cells.