The use of wild medicinal plants to treat human ailments has been known since ancient times. For pharmacological purposes, the unveiling of the potential of natural sources like plants is not a new approach [1]. Nearly 80% of the world population in developing countries relies on plants to treat many ailments like infections, pain management, wound healing, reproductive problems, skin infections, gut issues, etc. [2]. Due to the adverse effects of chemical entities, the preference for herbal products over synthetic medicine increases day by day. Still, many studies are required to explore the potential use of indigenous plants for human illnesses such as cancer and infectious diseases [3].

Bacterial infections are considered to be a significant health problem due to the genetic modification of microbes against a selected drug, resulting in various globally resistant bacterial species [4]. Research to find a better substance from a natural source to overcome this health hazard is always in progress. Several plants have been investigated for antibacterial activities [5]. In addition to this, cancer incidence is one of the leading causes of death in developing and developed countries. Its increasing prevalence results in vast and continuous economic losses throughout the world. Adverse effects of chemotherapy on the human body, like nausea, vomiting, alopecia, etc., demand the search for novel candidate plant species or medicinal agents with less toxic effects on normal cells and more toxicity against cancerous cells [6]. Plants and their derivatives can be helpful in cancer therapy. However, some wild medicinal plants that are still obscured in their pharmacological potential have been scientifically evaluated [7].

Prunus cornuta Wall. ex Royle (Rosaceae) and Quercus semicarpifolia Sm (Fagaceae) are widely found in the Himalayan regions of Pakistan and India [8,9,10]. These plants contain numeraditious phytochemicals such as alkaloids, glycosides, flavonoids, and tannins. Traditionally, P. cornuta has been used to cure anemia. In contrast, Q. semicarpifolia is used to treat various ailments such as muscular pain, bleeding, chronic diarrhea, wound healing, inflammation, and dysentery ^[11][12][13][11,12,13]. Therefore, the present study reports the phytochemical composition and therapeutic validation of P. cornuta (PC) and Q. semicarpifolia (QS) plants, particularly with antimicrobial and anticancer effects (Figure 1).

The results of the phytochemical investigation of methanolic extracts are summarized in Table 1.

F,G). However, positive control (doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide) inhibited cancer cell line growth with 17–27% cell viability. Furthermore, butanolic and n-hexane extracts in the QS plant exhibited low cell viability, providing remarkable retardation of cancerous cell proliferation. Thus, the results suggest that the Q. semicarpifolia extracts exhibit strong anti-proliferative ability without affecting the normal cells, as shown in Figure 3.

In this study, two strains, A. baumannii and S. enterica, were more sensitive than the other tested bacterial strains. Extracts showed the highest inhibition against A. baumannii, followed by S. enterica. Furthermore, extracts exhibited moderate activity against B. subtilis, K. pneumoniae, and E. coli. In PC extracts, the highest activity was observed by PCN and PCC (Table 2). The current study validated the excellent antibacterial activity of QS extract against K. pneumoniae, E. coli, B. subtilis, S. enterica, and A. baumannii, and QS extracts showed maximum inhibition with methanolic solvents, as shown in Table 2. All extracts exhibited potential bacterial inhibition activity from 9 to 18 mm to control (12 to 16 mm). In addition, both plant extracts showed significant antibacterial activity against A. baumannii as shown in Supplementary Data.

To assess the cytotoxic effect of P. cornuta and Q. semicarpifolia extracts on lung (A549), gut (Caco-2), liver (HepG2), breast (MDA-MB-231), and lung (NCI-H1437) cancer cell lines, an MTS assay was performed. The lower percentage cell viability values indicated a higher rate of cytotoxicity. Furthermore, the growth inhibition of cancerous cells was dose-dependent, where maximum growth inhibition was observed at the highest concentrations, i.e., 100 µg/mL (Figure 2 and 3).

The inhibitory effect of P. cornuta extracts was highest against MD-MBA-231 and potent against A549 and Caco-2 cells (100 µg/mL) (Figure 2A,B,D, respectively). Moreover, PC crude extracts showed moderate activity against HepG2 and NCI-H1437 (Figure 2C,E, respectively). However, all extracts showed less inhibition of cell proliferation in NCI-HI437 cells and good inhibition in MDA-MB-231 (18–30%) compared with the standard drugs (17 to 27% cell viability). Further, the percentage cell viability rate was 54 to 76% in primary epithelial cells HPAEpiC and HRPTEpiC, providing safety data for this study, Figure 2F,G. In addition to this, extracts in different solvents showed a slightly different inhibition pattern against a specific type of cancerous cells lines. Chloroform extracts of P. cornuta showed the highest cytotoxic effect in Caco-2, A549, and MDA-MB-231 cancerous cells, signifying the antibacterial activity results. These findings also indicated that statistically significant (p = 0.001) growth inhibition had been observed against A549 and MDA-MB321 (Figure 2A,D). The percentage of cell viability by P. cornuta extracts is shown in Table 5.

The effect of Q. semicarpifolia extracts on the cell viability of breast and gut cell lines was 30–35% viability after treatment (Figure 3B,D), whereas the lung and liver cell lines had 35–69% cell viability in the order of A549 > HepG2 cells > NCI-H1437 (Figure 3A,C,E respectively, Table 5). In contrast, no significant effect of Q. semicarpifolia extracts was observed on normal cell lines (Figure 3