Ecklonia cava is edible seaweed that is found in Asian countries, such as Japan and Korea; and, its major components include fucoidan and phlorotannins. Phlorotannins that are isolated from E. cava are well-known to have an antioxidant effect and strong antiviral activity against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), which has a high mortality rate in piglets. In this study, the bioactive components were determined based on two different approaches: (i) bio-guided isolation using the antiviral activity against the H1N1 viral strain, which is a representative influenza virus that originates from swine and (ii) high-resolution mass spectrometry-based dereplication, including relative mass defects (RMDs) and HPLC-qTOFMS fragmentation analysis. The EC70 fraction showed the strongest antiviral activity and contained thirteen phlorotannins, which were predicted by dereplication. Ten compounds were directly isolated from E. cava extract and then identified. Moreover, the dereplication method allowed for the discovery of two new phlorotannins. The structures of these two isolated compounds were elucidated using NMR techniques and HPLC-qTOFMS fragmentation analysis. In addition, molecular modelling was applied to determine the absolute configurations of the two new compounds. The antiviral activities of seven major phlorotannins in active fraction were evaluated against two influenza A viral strains (H1N1 and H9N2). Six of the compounds showed moderate to strong effects on both of the viruses and phlorofucofuroeckol A (12), which showed an EC50 value of 13.48 ± 1.93 μM, is a potential active antiviral component of E. cava.
As part of ongoing research to find new antidiabetic agents from medicinal plants, the chemical composition of Gynostemma longipes, an ethnomedicinal plant used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus by local communities in Vietnam, was investigated. Ten new dammarane triterpenes, including two 3,4-seco-dammarane analogues, secolongipegenins S1 and S2 (1 and 2), a 3,4-seco-hexanordammarane, secolongipegenin S3 (3), two hexanordammarane glycosides, longipenosides ND1 and ND2 (4 and 5), and five other dammarane glycosides, longipenosides GL1−GL5 (6−10), were isolated from a 70% EtOH extract of the whole G. longipes plant. The structures of the new compounds were elucidated using diverse spectroscopic methods. All of the isolates were evaluated for their stimulatory activities on glucose uptake in differentiated 3T3-L1 adipocyte cells using 2-[N-(7-nitrobenz-2-oxa-1,3-diazol-4-yl)amino]-2-deoxy-D-glucose as a fluorescent-tagged glucose probe. The stimulant activities on glucose uptake by the test compounds were mediated via the activation of the AMPK pathway using differentiated mouse C2C12 skeletal myoblasts. Consequently, compounds 1, 2, and 4 enhanced glucose uptake and GLUT4 translocation significantly by regulating the AMPK signaling pathway.
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