Biotechnological Approaches for the Production of Pharmaceutically Important Compound: Plumbagin

Background: Increased demand for compounds that are derived from natural source are gaining more and more importance. Plumbagin is a plant naphthoquinone which is present in several families, including Iridaceae, Plumbaginaceae, Ebenceae, Drosophyllaceae, Nepenthaceae and Droseraceae. Plumbagin possesses high therapeutic efficacy and minimal side effects. It has various pharmaceutical activities which include anticancer, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antifungal, neuroprotective and hypolipidemic activities. In natural habitat, production of plumbagin is low due to species variations and environmental changes, considering importance of this bioactive compound, alternative techniques for its enhanced production needs to be devised. In the present review, various production techniques and scale-up strategies for plumbagin production are discussed. Objectives: Aim of this review is to provide an insight into the chemistry of plumbagin, its pharmaceutical activities, perspective of cell suspension culture, root culture, hairy root culture and scale up strategies for its production. Methodology: All the data compiled and presented here were obtained from various E-resources like Pubmed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar up to February 2018. Result: This review comprises isolation, extraction and quantification method for plumbagin, its pharmaceutical activities, various tissue culture production techniques and scale-up strategies for enhanced production. Conclusion: Plumbagin is an important phytocompound which shows potential towards treatments of various diseases. Demand for the production of plumbagin continuously increasing worldwide due to its pharmacological properties. To fulfil commercial demand of plumbagin alternative technologies need to be investigated. Biotechnological approaches like cell suspension culture, root suspension culture and hairy root culture are alternative techniques for plumbagin production. These techniques provide continuous supply of bioactive compounds. However, research on various aspects of tissue culture production techniques is in preparatory stage and requires culture and process optimization for development of a commercially practical process.