Chemical Constituents of Pouzolzia zeylanica with PPARγ and PPARβ Activities

Abstract

Pouzolzia zeylanica is a flowering plant belonging to the Urticaceae family that is widely distributed throughout China, where it grows in the mountains and on the roadside. Pouzolzia zeylanica has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of different diseases, including acute mastitis, pyogenic infection, dysentery, indigestion, abdominal pain, infantile malnutrition, edema, dysuria, bruises, hemoptysis, hematemesis, and traumatic hemorrhage [1, 2]. Despite its use as a traditional Chinese medicine, there have been very few reports in the literature on the chemical composition of P. zeylanica. With this in mind, we conducted a phytochemical study of P. zeylanica, which resulted in the isolation and subsequent identification of 11 compounds 1–11, including N-[2-(3-hydroxy-4-methoxyphenyl)-2-hydroxyethyl]-3-(4methoxyphenyl)prop-2-enamide (1), 14,16-hentriacontanedione (2), sinapaldehyde (3), 3,4-dihydro-5,7-dihydroxy-4-(4hydroxyphenyl)coumarin (4), kaempferol (5), quercetin (6), stigmast-4-en-3-one (7), undecyl ferulate (8), -sitosterol (9), syringaresinol (10), and dipentylphthalate (11). Notably, this article represents the first reported example of the isolation of compounds 1–5, 7, 8, 10, and11 from P. zeylanica, as well as the first reported example of the isolation of compounds 1, 2, and 4 from a plant belonging to the Urticaceae family. The PPAR and PPAR activities of compounds 1–11 were evaluated using a luciferase reporter assay, and the results showed that some of these compounds exhibited reasonable levels of activity. Plant Material and Apparatus. Plant materials were purchased from An Guo Chang An Chinese Medicinal Herbs Company (Chongqing, China) in October 2011. The authenticity of the plant material was confirmed by Songyun Qin (research assistant) at the Chongqing Academy of Chinese Materia Medica, China. A voucher specimen of the plant material was also