Wen-Cai Ye
College of Pharmacy, Jinan University, P. R. China
Myrtaceae is a large plant family which contains about 130 genera and 4500 ~ 5000 species all around the world, most of them distributed in tropical and sub-tropical area. Plants of family Myrtaceae have been used as traditional herbal medicines for a long time. The essential oil of these plants is an important ingredient for not only pharmaceutical industry but also food and cosmetics. In recent years, our group had carried out systematically chemical and biological investigations on several medicinal plants of family Myrtaceae, such as Psidium guajava, Eucalyptus robusta, Baeckea frutescens, Callistemon rigidus, Myrtus communis, Rhodomyrtus tomentosa. As a result, a number of new phloroglucinol derivatives were isolated, including a series of novel compounds with more than 10 unprecedented skeletons. Bioactivity assays show that some phloroglucinol derivatives have potent antitumor, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activities. Especially, we discovered a library of phloroglucinol-monoterpene adducts composed of different building blocks through Diels-Alder reactions in the plant Baeckea frutescens. The plausible biogenetic pathway of these phloroglucinol-monoterpene adducts had been proposed, which was further supported by biomimetic synthesis.
References:
1. Shao M, Wang Y, Jian YQ, Huang XJ, Zhang DM, Tang QF, Jiang RW, Sun XG, Lv ZP, Zhang XQ, Ye WC. Guadial A and psiguadials C and D, three unusual meroterpenoids from Psidium guajava. Org Lett, 2012, 14: 5262-5265.
2. Shao M, Wang Y, Liu Z, Zhang DM, Cao HH, Jiang RW, Fan CL, Zhang XQ, Chen HR, Yao XS, Ye WC. Psiguadials A and B, two novel meroterpenoids with unusual skeletons from the leaves of Psidium guajava. Org Lett, 2010, 12: 5040-5043.
3. Jian YQ, Huang XJ, Zhang DM, Jiang RW, Chen MF, Zhao BX, Wang Y, Ye WC. Guapsidial A and guadials B and C: Three new meroterpenoids with unusual skeletons from the leaves of Psidium guajava. Chem Eur J, 2015, 21: 9022-9027.
Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Joint Fund of NSFC-Guangdong Province (No. U1401225).
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