Studies On Chemical Constituents And Biological Activities From Peels Of Aquilaria Sinensis

Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg, a tropical and subtropical evergreen trees,belonging to the family Thymelaeaceae, is endemic and rare medicinal plants inChina. A. sinensis can secrete a fragrant defensive black resin when suffering aninjury or infected by fungi. The black resin, called Chinese eaglewood, is specificmedicine for stomach disease, and has other pharmacological effects sucu asspasmolysis, antihypertensive, antibacterial, sedation, analgesia and so on. In addition,Chinese eaglewood can be used as a spice materials to extract the aromatic oil. Theresearch of A. sinensis has reported mainly on the flowers, leaves, seeds, and thechemical constituents and biological activities of stems, and the studies on chemicalconstituents and biological activities from peels of A. sinensis is raletively less. Toexploit and utilize the plant resource properly, the chemical constituents of peels of A.sinensis has studied, and the cytotoxic activity and antimicrobial activity of thecopmpounds from the peels has been tested.Objective To study chemical constituents of the peels of Aquilaria sinensis andtheir cytotoxic and antibacterial activities. Methods The compounds were isolated byvarious chromatographic methods (silica gel, reverse silica gel, Sephadex-LH20,preparative TLC, and so on) and recrystallization. Their structures were identified bymeans of spectroscopic techniques, including EI-MS, HR-EI-MS,1H-NMR,13C-NMR,1H-1H COSY, HSQC, HMBC; The cytotoxic effects of these compounds onSF-268, MCF-7, NCI-H460and HePG-2cell lines were observed in vitro by SRBmethod, and the antibacterial effects of these compounds on Staphyloccocus aureusand Escherichia coli were observed in vitro by resazurin staining method. Results Twenty-three compounds were isolated from the peels of Aquilaria sinensis andSixteen compounds were elucidated as cucurbitacin E (1), dihydrocucurbitacin E (2),endecaphyllacins B (3),2-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-cucurbitacin I (4), cucurbitacin I(5), isorhamnetin-3-O-(6’’-O-(Z)-p-coumaroyl)-β-D-glucopyranoside (6), buddl-enoidA (7),7-methoxy-4’–hydroxyisoflavone (8), trans-p-coumaric acid ethyl eater（9）,costunolide (10), luteolin (11), epifriedelanol (12）, stigmasterol (13), methyl-4-hydroxybenzoate (14）, catechol (15) and bis(2-ethylheptyl)phythalate (16)。Conclusion Compounds2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10are isolated from the genus Aquilariafor the first time. Compound1,2,3,4,5,10exhibits the significant cytotoxicactivities against on SF-268, MCF-7, NCI-H460and HePG-2cell lines, andcompounds6,11show some antibacterial activities against S. aureus and E. coli.