After extraction of pure essential oil, I dissolved 10% EO in pure DMSO. When I use 10% of that for anti fungal assay in 96 well plate, activity was good but control DMSO also showed activity against cells. How do I solubilize EO ?
there are several chemical solution, but let's consider the pahrmacological aspect; pharmacologists are mainly involved in toxicology and therefore they usually accept (for some strange reason) DMSO as solvent and not other ones. Therefore, the only solution is subtract the activity of DMSO and try to convince the referee.
Alternatively, you could dissolve DMSO during the preparation of the stock solution. Example, if you want to prepare a stock of 25mg/mL, you could dissolve 25mg of the EO in 250uL of DMSO and top-up to 1mL by adding 750uL of the vehicle.
You could prepare the stock solution using DMSO and further dissolve with the culture medium during the preparation of the test solution. This process will bring down the concentration of DMSO to below 2%.
Try Tween X80, or mixed solvent systems ( e.g. ethylacetate: Chloroform) (using different ratios (1:2, 1:1, 2;1) to dissolve EO or use the paper disc method after evaporation of the solvent by hot dry air post loading.
You may need to 1. use methanol or 2. to minus the effect of DMSO of the total activity or 3. just mention the effect of DMSO in your tables
Are you sure you need DMSO or an organic solvent? Maybe the extract is water soluble. If you do need a solvent, try lower level of DMSA.
Be aware - this approach is academic as virtually no application will allow DMSO and the use of any solvent is not adequately controlled by a simple solvent-only control.
Phil Geis My work is on essential oils and not extract, these oils are not at all water soluble. DMSO acts as a solvent which dissolves oils properly in the water. But also pure DMSO gives cytotoxic activity and results for tests are not relevant if my solvent is also killing cells.
Kang Thierry Roland Can you please elaborate more in volumetric terms, I want to perform MIC of my essential oil.
The tests are not relevant if you must use DMSO. What product application allows DMSO?
Why are you using pure DMSO? What % is DMSO in your aq. solution of DMSO and oil? At that effective concentration DMSO typically does not offer inhibition. However, that still does not answer the question of synergy.
If the essential oil is showing activity when dissolved in DMSO, you can try a different solvent such as ethanol, propylene glycol, or glycerol. Each of these solvents has different properties that may interact differently with the essential oil. You can also try diluting the DMSO solution with a different solvent to reduce its activity. Finally, you can experiment with different concentrations of the essential oil in the solvent to determine if the activity can be reduced.
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