Abstract
As part of our ongoing search for bioactive constituents from natural Korean medicinal resources, a bioassay-guided fractionation and a chemical investigation of the methanolic extract from the rhizomes of Acorus gramineus resulted in the isolation and identification of two alkaloids, including a new aporphine-type alkaloid, named gramichunosin, and a known pyrrole alkaloid. Their structures were determined by a combination of 1D and 2D nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic analysis and high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). This is the first report of alkaloids from A. gramineus. The compounds isolated showed antiproliferative activities against A549, SK-OV-3, SK-MEL-2 and HCT-15 cell lines with EC50 values in the range of 7.46-45.23 μM. Moreover, the anti-neuroinflammatory activities of these compounds were determined by measuring the nitric oxide (NO) levels in the medium using murine microglia BV-2 cells. Compound named gramichunosin inhibited NO production in lipopolysaccharide-stimulated BV-2 with IC50 values of 7.83 μM.
Highlights
Alkaloids are a chemically heterogenous group of natural substance and compose more than 6000 basic nitrogen containing organic compounds that occur in about 15% of all vascular terresterial plants and in more than 150 different plant families
As part of our ongoing search for bioactive constituents from natural Korean medicinal resources, we found that the methanolic (MeOH) extract from the rhizomes of A. gramineus had excellent cytotoxic activity against A549, SK-OV-3 and SK-MEL-2 cells and showed inhibitory effects on nitric oxide (NO) production using an activated murine microglial cell line in our preliminary studies
To the best of our knowledge, the presence of alkaloids is reported from A. gramineus for the first time in this study
Summary
Alkaloids are a chemically heterogenous group of natural substance and compose more than 6000 basic nitrogen containing organic compounds that occur in about 15% of all vascular terresterial plants and in more than 150 different plant families. A bioassay-guided fractionation and chemical investigation of its MeOH extract resulted in the isolation and identification of two alkaloids, including a new aporphine-type alkaloid (1), named gramichunosin, and a known pyrrole alkaloid (2). This report will discuss the isolation and structural elucidation of the two alkaloids from A. gramineus rhizomes (Figure 1), as well as their antiproliferative activities against A549, SK-OV-3, SK-MEL-2 and HCT-15 cell lines and their inhibitory effects on NO production in a lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-activated BV2 cell line.
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