Records of Natural Products Articles

The dichloromethane (DCM) and ethyl acetate (EtOAc) extracts of C. caeruleus yielded nine known compounds, including an A-nor-lupane triterpenoid identified as gouanic acid B (1). Additionally, its acetyl derivative, acetylgouanic acid B (2), is reported here for the first time as a natural product. Furthermore, we tested the bioactivity of natural products 1 and 2 and their dimethyl ester derivatives 3 and 4 against cancer cell lines MCF-7, A549, HeLa, and K562. Among these, compounds 1 (IC50 = 36.4 ± 4.0 μM), 2 (IC50 = 21.6 ± 4.3 μM), and 4 (IC50 = 33.0 ± 2.0 μM) demonstrated moderate to good activity against the K562 cell line while maintaining a satisfactory survival rate in non-cancerous bMEC cells. Notably, the natural triterpenes 1 and 2 and derivative 4 showed remarkable outcomes in cytotoxicity tests due to their specificity against K562 leukemia cells.

TThe current study aimed to characterize the metabolite fingerprints of the rhizomes of Curcuma caesia Roxb. (KH) and Kaempferia parviflora Wall. ex Baker (HH) in the family Zingiberaceae using a combination of 1H-NMR and GC-MS analyses. There are authentication issues between these two species, wherein both are commonly commercialized as Kunyit Hitam (KH) or Black Turmeric, the local name only for C. caesia. K. parviflora is locally known as Halia Hitam (HH) or Black Ginger. The metabolite profile for each species was analyzed through 1H-NMR data by multivariate data analysis (MVDA) to determine the chemical markers. Orthogonal Partial Least Square-Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) showed clusters of the two species in which the Variable Importance in Projection (VIP) values of more than 1 yielded eleven and four discriminated metabolites belonging to C. caesia (KH) and K. parviflora (HH) respectively. The hexane extracts of the rhizomes of KH and HH were subjected to GC-MS profiling which resulted in 22 and 24 metabolites, respectively and terpenoids, flavonoids, and alkanes were tentatively identified in KH and HH. This study developed characteristic metabolite fingerprinting profiles for each species which distinguish between the rhizomes unambiguously and provide an authenticity assessment of the available products for the patient's benefit.