Nanoformulations of Essential Oils Extracted from Pistacia Lentiscus and Boswellia Sacra and Investigation of their Anticancer, Antimicrobial, and Antioxidant Activities.

Essential oils (EOs) obtained from natural sources have shown promising biological and therapeutical properties such as anticancer, antimicrobial, and antioxidant activities, attributing to their high content of a variety of bioactive components. However, EOs’ therapeutic properties are limited by their low stability, poor bioavailability, high volatility, and low targeting ability. Therefore, the encapsulation and nanoformulation of EOs can maximize their therapeutical efficiency and physicochemical properties while overcoming their undesirable side effects and drawbacks. EOs extracted from the resins of Pistacia Lentiscus var. Chia (P.oil) and Boswellia Sacra (B.oil) are two promising EOs that have shown great therapeutic potential. P.oil was successfully extracted, via a green extraction method of hydrodistillation, and its chemical composition was determined using GC-MS analysis technique. Thereafter, P.oil and 5-Fluorouracil (5FU), a chemotherapeutic agent, were loaded into poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) nanofibers (PCL-NFs), via electrospinning technique, to compare and investigate their in-vitro anticancer activities and their potential synergistic properties against three cancer cell lines, two of them for breast cancer (MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7) and one for melanoma skin cancer (A375). The diameter size and morphology of the obtained NFs were determined using Field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), where all NFs groups showed an average diameter size between 300 and 600 nm. The encapsulation of P.oil and 5FU into NFs was further investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) characterization techniques. The thermal stability of the NFs groups was examined using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) technique to eventually show a greater stability among all NFs and an enhancement of the 5FU thermal stability by at least 1-fold. Also, NFs revealed excellent physical integrity over 70 days, showing good mechanical and physical properties while remaining intact without any ...