Chemical constituents of Ligusticum chuanxiong and their anti-inflammation and hepatoprotective activities

Abstract

Ligusticum chuanxiong Hort is a famous health promoting plant cultivated in China, and widely consumed due to its various curative effects. To study the potential bioactive constituents from the rhizome of L. chuanxiong, a chemical investigation was thus performed. In present study, we report the isolation and identification of ten new compounds, including two coumarins (1–2), four lignans (3–6), and four phenols (7–10), along with five known compounds (11–15) from the rhizome of L. chuanxiong. The structures of these compounds were unambiguously established by HR-ESI-MS, UV, IR, CD, NMR spectral data and comparison to reported data. Meanwhile, the anti-inflammation and hepatoprotective activities of all these compounds were evaluated. The results show that compounds 5, 6 and 7 showed excellent inhibition of NO production in LPS-induced RAW 264.7 cells stronger than curcumin, and compounds 5, 7 and 9 exhibited greater hepatoprotective effect than that of bicyclol.