In vitro Investigation of Wound Healing, Cytotoxic, Antioxidant Properties of Shed Snake Skin (Dolichophis caspius) Aqueous Extract

İngilizce (OpenAlex)

Purpose: As cold-blooded reptiles, snakes seasonally shed dead skin cells due to thickening of the skin and removing harmful parasites during growth. Dolichophis caspius is a popularly known snake in Türkiye that sheds its skin at certain times of the year. The focus of this study was to determine the total phenolic and total flavonoid contents, as well as the antioxidant activity, of the aqueous extracts of D. caspius shed skin and to investigate the effects of these extracts on cytotoxicity and wound healing. Method: The shed snake skins were extracted using distilled water. Then, the total phenolic contents, the total flavonoid contents, and the antioxidant activity were evaluated through the Folin-Ciocalteu method, the aluminum-chloride colorimetric assay, and the DPPH method, respectively. The cytotoxic activity was determined by MTT assay and the effect on in vitro wound healing was determined by scratch assay. Findings: Total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, and antioxidant activity of the extract were calculated as 681±46 µg GAE/g, 442.35±13 µg CE/g, and 13.06%, respectively. IC50 values were determined as 2972±179 µg/mL and 2657±128 µg/mL for dermal fibroblast cells (BJ cell line) and melanoma cells (SK-MEL-30 cell line) in 72 hours. In comparison to the control group, it was found that the extracts at the studied doses do not have effective wound closure rates in BJ cells. Conclusion: It has been determined that shed snake skins will have promising results in cytotoxicity and wound healing studies thanks to their potentially active biomolecules.