The investigation of the aerial parts of Haplophyllum laeviusculum (Rutaceae), a perennial herb native to Iran, afforded three alkaloids, skimmianine (1), lunamarine (2), ribalinidine (3) and and two common sterols, γ-sitosterol and campesterol. The structures of compounds were identified by using spectroscopic methods by using UV, IR, NMR, MS spectra and also by comparison with previous works. There has been no detail phytochemical investigation report on the plant carried previously. This is the first report on the identification of skimmianine (1), lunamarine (2) from genus Haplophyllum.
The leaves and stem barks extracts of four plant species, Melicope confusa, M. clemensiae, M. lunu-ankenda and M. latifolia were screened for their antimicrobial, antioxidant and cytotoxic activities. Almost all extracts of M. clemensia exhibited moderate growth inhibition when tested against the three pathogenic fungi. However, when tested against pathogenic bacteria, the three leaves extracts showed strong activity against methicillin resistant S. aureus and moderate for the other bacteria. In the antioxidant assay by using DPPH, the three leaves extracts of M. lunu-ankenda exhibited significant activity with with IC50 values of 7.8, 15.6 and 7.8 μg/mL. In addition, the petroleum ether leaves extract of M. clemensiae and the chloroform leaves extract of M. lunu-ankenda showed strong cytotoxic activity when tested against human promyelocytic leukemia (HL60) cell line with IC50 values of 2.8 and 0.8 μg/mL, respectively.
Air-dried leaves of both Glycosmis citrifolia and Glycosmis elongata collected from Bogor Botanical Garden, Indonesia were individually extracted with chloroform to give dark viscous extracts after solvent removal. Column chromatographic separation of the extract of G. citrifolia yielded 5(6)-glutene-3α-ol, two sets conformers, (E)-dambullin and (Z)-dambullin, and (E)-methyldambullin and (Z)-methyldambullin. Similar treatment of the extract of G. elongata gave skimmianine and arborinine. The structures of the compounds were elucidated based on spectroscopic data and comparison with published reports.
Biological activities of crude methanolic extracts from leaves, barks, twigs and roots of Enicosanthellum pulchrum were investigated in four bioassays. The antioxidant, 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging assay showed that bark and twig extracts showed high inhibitory activity with 60 and 56% inhibition at 1 mg/mL and IC50 values of 0.43 ± 0.04 and 0.64 ± 0.05 mg/mL, respectively. The bark and root extracts showed greater reducing power (FRAP) than several standard drugs used in the bioassay. Methanolic extracts of leaves, twigs and roots displayed strong cytotoxicity to breast cancer cell line (MCF-7), myelomonocytic leukaemia cell line (WEHI-3) and ovarian cancer cell line (CAOV-3); the IC50 of the leaf extract were 7.8 ± 0.85 μg/mL (MCF-7) and 9.0 ± 0.13 μg/mL (WEHI-3), while those for the twig and root extracts were 13.9 ± 0.35 and 7.3 ± 0.98 μg/mL (CAOV-3), respectively. In the antimicrobial assays, the extracts were tested against ten bacterial strains and two fungal strains. Bark and twig extracts displayed high inhibitory activity to Bacillus subtilis with 13.3 ± 0.57 and 12.0 ± 0.01 mm inhibition, respectively. In addition, the twig extract displayed better minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) compared with the bark extract (MIC 0.5 and 1.0 mg/mL, MBC 1.0 and 2.0 mg/mL, respectively). For antifungal activity, all extracts showed inhibition on Candida albicans but not on Aspergillus niger. The obtained results suggested that this plant may possibly contain bioactive compounds in the active extracts.