# Biocompounds and Bioactivities of Selected Greek Boraginaceae Seeds
## 5 Conclusions  
Among the Greek Boraginaceae taxa analyzed in this work, three species showed high amounts of GLA in their seed oils, i.e., both _Symplytum_ species and _L. zahnii_, and most of them showed high amounts of rosmarinic acid and rutin, highlighting _C. major_, _Alkamus_ spp., _S. _creticum_, and _L. zahnii_, while their antioxidant activity was in line with other GLA-rich seeds. The phenolic extract of several extracts, especially those of _C. major_ and _L. zahnii_, showed dose- and time-dependent activity against the human colorectal cancer cell line HT-29. This activity is noteworthy, given that HT-29 cells tend to be unresponsive to phenolics. The antiproliferative bioactivity effect of phenolic extracts was probably due to a synergy among compounds having high antiproliferative activity. The GLA-rich species analyzed in this work have optimal FA and phenolics profiles, as well as good antioxidant and antitumor activities; thus, new crops could be developed from these taxa to supply GLA-rich oils to the food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries. It is advisable to perform cold-press extraction of these oils, since when extracting oils with organic solvents during the refining process bioactive compounds are removed, thus they lose most of their functional properties. In this work, most of the seeds have been collected in a single location; therefore, some variation in the concentration of bioactive compounds and/or bioactivities could be expected from seeds collected in other locations, as well as from seeds collected in different years. This variation would be marginal in the case of FAs, since their percentages are a consequence of genetically regulated enzymatic activities. Figure 4: Pearson Product-Moment Correlations. Heat map of the correlation between the different variables. The redder colors indicate a stronger positive correlation, while the bluer colors indicate a stronger negative correlation. Correlations were evaluated with a significance of \(p<0.05\) (*) and \(p<0.01\) (**)**. Abbreviations: LA—linoleic acid; GLA—gamma-linolenic acid; ALA—alpha-linolenic acid; MUFAs—monounsaturated FAs; SFAs—saturated FAs; Total FAs—total fatty acids; TPC—total phenolics content; TPC—total flavonoids content; ChlorA—chlorogenic acid; \(t\)-\(p\)-CouA—_trans-\(p\)_-coumaric acid; Isoquer—isoquercetin; Apiget—apigetrin, LithA—lithospermic acid; SalvA—salvianacid; \(\mathrm{GI_{mg/mL}}\)—percentage of cell growth inhibition exercised by adding 1 mg/mL of seed extract to cell cultures, measured with the MTT test. However, as discussed above, phenolic concentrations are more variable within the same taxon. Therefore, it would be interesting to investigate to what extent the richness in rosmarinic acid shown by some species is environmentally dependent. The following supporting information can be downloaded at [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14146026/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14146026/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14146026/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14146026/s1)): Supplementary File S1: Material and Methods; Supplementary Figure SI: A 254 nm-HPLC chromatogram of the phenolic-containing methanol:water extract of _S.