Over the ages people have relied upon nature to meet their fundamental needs, including
medicines for the treatment of wide variety of diseases. The second most significant cause of
death in the world is tuberculosis (TB) from bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Although
the adverse reaction to first line therapy is less, many patients experience untoward effects
while on multi-drug therapy leading to non-compliance. With these in perspective, our
research group is in pursuit of novel anti TB drugs from natural products.
We isolated four compounds belonging to clerodane class of diterpenes from the plant
Polyalthia longifolia var Pendula. Among these 16?-hydroxycleroda3,13 (14)Zdien15,16olide (1), 16Oxo-cleroda3,13(14)E-diene15 oic acid (2), methyl (Z)-3-formyl-5-
((8aR)-1,2,4a,5-tetramethyl-1,2,3,4,4a,7,8,8a-octahydronaphthalen-1-yl)pent-2-enoate (3), 5-
methoxy-4-(2-((8aR)-1,2,4a,5-tetramethyl-1,2,3,4,4a,7,8,8a-octahydronaphthalen-1-
yl)ethyl)furan-2(5H)-one (4). Compounds 1, 2 & 4 showed potent anti TB activity (MIC
3.125µg/ml) Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv. They also have shown significant
antibacterial activity against gram +ve (Staphylococcus aureus (NCIM 2122)) and gram -ve (Escherichia coli (NCIM 2137)) bacteria at 50µg/mL indicating at good selectivity against
Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Keywords: Polyalthia longifolia var Pendula seeds, Anti tubercular activity, MABA
assay, Anti-bacterial activity, Antifungal activity
Publication date: 01/11/2022
https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2022/November/MS_IJBPAS_2022_6542.pdf
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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2022/11.11.6542
