Chemical constituents from Artemisia vulgaris and their antiausterity activities against the PANC-1 human pancreatic cancer cell line

Abstract

The 70% ethanolic extract of Artemisia vulgaris showed preferential cytotoxicity against PANC-1 human pancreatic cancer cells under a nutrient-deprived condition with PC₅₀ 12.5 μg/mL. A phytochemical investigation of this extract yielded a new bicyclic [4:3:0] sesquiterpene named (+)-vulgaric acid (1), together with eight previously reported compounds. The structural elucidation of 1 was achieved by HRFABMS and NMR analysis. The absolute configuration of 1 was deduced by computational calculations of ECD data. All isolated compounds were tested for preferential cytotoxicity against PANC-1 cells, and apigenin (3) showed the strongest activity with PC₅₀ 30.7 μM.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Artemisia vulgaris
• sesquiterpene
• anti-austerity
• ECD calculation

Acknowledgments

Authors thank the Egyptian-Japanese Education partnership (EJEP) fellowship for supporting A.M.O. and A.M.T.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Japan, Kakenhi (16K08319) and Kobayashi International Scholarship Foundation to S.A.