Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 National Center for Natural Products Research, School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi, University, MS, USA
  • 3 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 4 Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
Nat Prod Res, 2021 Feb 12.
PMID: 33576269 DOI: 10.1080/14786419.2021.1885031

Abstract

An undescribed conjugated sesquiterpene, amelicarin (1), together with nine known compounds (2-10) were isolated for the first time from Melicope latifolia. Their structures were elucidated by extensive NMR spectroscopic and mass spectrometric methods. The conjugated sesquiterpene possesses a unique 6/6/9/4-ring fused tetracyclic skeleton. The proposed biosynthesis pathway of 1 consist of three reactions steps: (1) polyketide formation, (2) cyclisation and (3) addition to form the conjugated sesquiterpenoid as final metabolite. Out of the ten isolated metabolites, amelicarin (1) showed activity against 4 cancerous cell lines namely SK-MEL skin cancer, KB oral cancer, BT-549 breast cancer, and SK-OV-3 ovarian cancer with IC50 values between 15 and 25 µg/mL.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.