| Abstract |
Chemical investigation of the natural products from the wild-type soft corals Paralemnalia thyrsoides and Sinularia erecta, and cultured soft corals Sinularia brassica and Sarcophyton glaucum have afforded thirty-seven natural products 1–37, among which twenty-six are new compounds 1–5, 9–11, 15 and 17–33, including nardosinane-type sesquiterpenoids 1–5, norcembranoids 9 and 10, cembranoid 11, withanolides 17–28, and biscembranoids 32 and 33. The structures of metabolites were elucidated on the basis of extensive spectroscopic methods, in particular 1D and 2D NMR experiments. The absolute configuration of 1 was determined by the application of Mosher’s method, compound 17 was established by X-ray crystallographic analysis, and compounds 33 were further confirmed by comparison of the CD (circular dichroism) spectroscopic data with structurally related compound. In the above metabolites, compounds 9, 11, 15–18, 20–22, 24–27, 29 and 31–33 were found to exhibit significant cytotoxicity toward several cancer cell lines. From the neurological activity results, compounds 1, 3, 6 and 7 were found to possess neuroprotective activity, and deserve for further studies against therapeutic potential neurodegenerative diseases. In anti-inflammation assay, compounds 9, 10, 16, 17, 19, 28 and 30–33 displayed strong inhibition of superoxide anion generation and elastase release in human neutrophils stimulated by fMLP/CB. Moreover, compounds 32 and 33 exhibited significant anti-inflammatory effect on inhibition of inducible nitric oxide synthetase (iNOS) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) protein expression of LPS-induced RAW264.7 macrophage cells. Owing to these attractive biological activities, those compounds might be useful for future medicinal application. In addition, bioactive metabolites 17, 18−22 and 24−37 were isolated from the cultured soft corals could be adequately supplied for further pharmacological investigation by aquaculture. |
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