Flavonoids are one of the most important and diversified phenolic groups among products of natural origin. An important property of this metabolite class is the antioxidant action. This study evaluated the antioxidant and cytotoxic activities and oxidative stress of transesterification products of the flavonoid rutin, catalyzed by Novozym® 435. The presence of monoacetate and diacetate was confirmed by quantitative evaluation of the retention times (rutin, 15.68 min; rutin monoacetate, 18.14 min; and rutin diacetate, 18.57 min) and by the data from LC-MS and NMR 1H and 13C. The experiment showed excellent conversion values of 96% in total acetates (rutin monoacetate and diacetate). These results confirmed that rutin derivatives have antioxidant potential, as evaluated by the ORAC method (rutin standard: 0.53 ± 0.08 μM Trolox/g and rutin derivatives: 2.33 ± 1.08 μM Trolox/g) and also show low cytotoxicity in human and animal cells. Rutin derivatives reduced the production of reactive oxygen species in RAW macrophages as well. Many qualities attributed to rutin derivatives make them promising potential candidates for use as nutraceuticals, including their high amounts of antioxidants, biological potential and low toxicity, which contribute to the reduction of oxidative stress.

Terpenes are one of the most abundant classes of secondary metabolites produced by plants and can be divided based on the number of isoprene units (C5) in monoterpenes (2 units—C10), sesquiterpenes (3 units—C15), diterpenes (4 units—C20), triterpenes (6 units—C30), etc. Chemically, triterpenes are classified based on their structural skeleton including lanostanes, euphanes, cycloartanes, ursanes, oleananes, lupanes, tirucallanes, cucurbitanes, dammaranes, baccharanes, friedelanes, hopanes, serratanes etc. Additionally, glycosylated (saponins) or highly oxidated/degraded (limonoids) triterpenes could be found in nature. The antiinflammatory effect and action as immunomodulators of these secondary metabolites have been demonstrated in different studies. This review reports an overview of articles published in the last 15 years (from 2006 to 2021 using PubMed and SciFinder database) describing the antiinflammatory effects of different triterpenes with their presumed mechanism of action, suggesting that triterpenes could be appointed as natural products with future pharmaceutical applicability.

Numbers of Compounds(1) Miquelianin (2) Isoquercitrin (3) Quercitrin (4) Kaempferol-3-O-pentose (5) Afzelin (6) Isorhamnetin-glucuronide

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