Regular ArticleThe orthoester group contains a carbon atom bearing three alkoxy or aryloxy groups, and, combined with additional attachments and/or rings, constructs often various structural skeletons of stereochemical complexity, such as daphnane diterpenoids, phragmalin-type limonoids, and bufadienolide and ergostanoid steroids, some of which showed anticancer, antifeedant, and insecticidal activities.
1)Phragmalin-type limonoid orthoester is an important branch of orthoesters with phragmalin limonoid as the basic skeleton, discovered exclusively from the genera of Meliaceae.1,2) The genus chukrasia (Meliaceae) 3) was revealed to be a rich resource of structure diversified phragmalin-type limonoids as well as orthoesters. [4][5][6][7][8][9] Our previous study on phragmalin-type limonoids from Chukrasia tabularis var. velutina afforded a series of 16-norphragmalin limonoids 10,11) and a new class of C-15-acyl phragmalin-type limonoids orthoesters.12) In our present research, nine new phragmalintype limonoid orthoesters, tabulalides F-N (1-9), together with three known compounds, tabulalides C and D and tabularisin N (10-12), were isolated from the ethanol extract of this plant. The structures of these new compounds ( Fig. 1) were elucidated using extensive 2D spectroscopic technologies, and the absolute configurations of 1 and 2 were determined by circular dichroism (CD) exciton chirality method.1,13) Tabulalide F (1) possesses a rare orthoisobutylate moiety in phragmalin limonoid orthoesters.Anticancer activity is the important aspect of limonoids from Meliaceae, and a precursor of phragmalin limonoid was found to be a novel Hsp90 inhibitor.14,15) So, we evaluated cytotoxic activity of compounds 2-12 against five human cancer cell lines, MCF-7 (human breast cancer), Hela (human cervical cancer), SGC-7901 and BGC-823 (human gastric cancer), HepG2 (human liver cancer). The preliminary results indicated that compund 2 exhibts moderate cytotoxic activity against MCF-7 with IC 50 value of 20.4 mmol/l and weak cytotoxic activity against SGC-7901 with IC 50 value of 63.4 mmol/l. The other isolates show weak cytotoxic activity or noncytotoxic (IC 50 Ͼ100 mmol/l) anainst other cancer cell lines. Herein, the isolation, structural elucidation, and cytotoxic activity of these isolates were reported.
Results and DiscussionTabulalide F (1) was isolated as white amorphous powder. Its molecular formula was established to be C 38 H 44 O 17 by the high resolution-electrospray ionization (HR-ESI)-MS ion at m/z 783.2470 [MϩNa] ϩ (Calcd: C 36 H 44 O 16 Na, 783.2471). The IR absorption bands at 3499, 1737 and 1641 cm Ϫ1 suggested the presence of hydroxyl, ester, and a,b-unsaturated ester carbonyl groups. The data from decoupling and subsequent 1D-and 2D-NMR studies ( 1 H, 13 C, heteronuclear multiple bond connectivity (HMBC), heteronuclear single quantum coherence (HSQC), and rotating frame Overhauser enhancement spectroscopy (ROESY)) (Fig. 2) Nine new phragmalin-type limonoid orthoesters, tabulalides F-N (1-9), together with th...