Another new aspect of seedcake extract utilization is its potent
antimicrobial activity. The worldwide increase in multidrug resistance
ofpathogenic bacteriahas led to anincreasingneed for topical
antimicrobial products that can be applied for therapy of infections.
Many of the products are admittedly highly cytotoxic toward
microbial cells, but unfortunately at the same time they have side
effects on human tissue. Thus, searching for products that effectively
kill bacteria but do not cause side effects has become an issue
of great importance in modern bio-medical sciences. It was found
that seedcakes from flax plants are a rich source of phenolic compounds
potentially active against bacteria. Indeed,the results ofthe
recent studies on flax plants, including genetically modified plants,
resulted in a potential new, fully natural pharmaceutical product
containing biologically active compounds that exhibit antibacterial
properties. For example, in one study a seedcake extract was
tested against sensitive and multidrug-resistant clinical bacterial
strains (Zuk et al., 2014). The alkali hydrolyzed seedcake extract
from genetically modified flax was prepared and its biochemical
composition was carefully analyzed. It was found that seedcake
extract is a rich source of strong antioxidant metabolites such as
coumaric acid, ferulic acid, caffeic acid, and lignan. Antimicrobial
activity of the extract was examined using a minimal inhibitory
concentration (MIC) test on four bacterial species, normally used as
model organisms for analysis of antibiotic resistance, and also clinical
strains that acquired resistance to more than three groups of
antibiotics. The extract exhibited strong germicidal activity against
all these species. The antimicrobial activity of standard substances
was also analyzed, and the obtained results suggest that phenolic
acids are responsible for antimicrobial activity of flax seedcake
extract. The data lead to the suggestion that flax seedcake extract
may be a suitable candidate for unselective antimicrobialtreatment
and that flax-derived natural products are a promising substitute
or even alternative to antibiotic therapy. A potential mechanism of
action based on DNA disintegration and topoisomerase II (gyrase)
inhibition was proposed (Zuk et al., 2014)