The Celastraceae family comprises about 96 genera and more than 1.350 species, occurring mainly in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. The species of this family stand out as important plant sources of triterpenes, both in terms of abundance and structural diversity. Triterpenoids found in Celastraceae species display mainly lupane, ursane, oleanane, and friedelane skeletons, exhibiting a wide range of biological activities such as antiviral, antimicrobial, analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and cytotoxic against various tumor cell lines. This review aimed to document all triterpenes isolated from different botanical parts of species of the Celastraceae family covering 2001 to 2021. Furthermore, a compilation of their 13C-NMR data was carried out to help characterize compounds in future investigations. A total of 504 pentacyclic triterpenes were compiled and distinguished as 29 aromatic, 50 dimers, 103 friedelanes, 89 lupanes, 102 oleananes, 22 quinonemethides, 88 ursanes and 21 classified as others.

Magonia pubescens A. St.‐Hil. is a Brazilian species often used in ethnopharmacology for wound and pain healing and seborrhea treatment. For the first time, essential oils (EOs) obtained from M. pubescens inflorescences were studied. The plant materials (Montes Claros, Brazil, 2018) were submitted to different gamma‐radiation doses and their chemical compositions were analyzed by GC/MS and GC‐FID. The cytotoxic activity of the EOs was evaluated against K562 and MDA‐MB‐231 cancer cell lines. A total of 30 components were identified, being 24 compounds detected for the first time in M. pubescens. The main obtained components were hotrienol (35.9 %), cis‐linalool oxide (17.0 %) and trans‐linalool oxide (10.2 %). The chemical composition of the EO was slightly affected by the applied radiation doses. Irradiated and non‐irradiated EOs showed cytotoxic activity against both cell lines and the non‐irradiated EO sample was the most active against the K562 cell lines (IC50=22.10±1.98).

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The increasing social and political pressures related to the environmental problems generated by traditional chemical processes involving the use of toxic solvents, strong acids, and high energy demand suggest utilization of clean methodologies that follow the precepts established by green chemistry. Enzymatic catalysis promotes enantioselective syntheses operating under mild condi-tions of temperature and pressure. The process, however, requires elevated times of reactions and the use of high-cost immobilized derivatives. These consequences usually become obstacles to industrial application of such syntheses. Using of ultrasound and microwaves as alternative heat-ing sources in the enzymatic catalysis, it is possible to overcome these problems besides leading to satisfactory yields and allowing the reduction of solvent volume. In this work, esterification reactions of oleic acid were performed to obtain xylitol monooleate by using alternative method-ologies which agree with the precepts of green chemistry. Yield of 96,5% employing microwave heating and 74,6% with ultrasound were obtained, both using the amount of 2,5 mL of solvent, half of the previous reports. In microwave heating, the reuse of the immobilized enzyme was pos-sible till the third use, retaining yields above 77%. The results showed that was possible to reduce the mass of the catalyst, the volume of the solvent, and the energy consumed in the process with-out significant loss related to the reaction yield.