Phenolic glycosides and flavonoids with antioxidant and anticancer activities from Desmodium caudatum

Abstract

Descaudatine A (1), an undescribed phenolic glycoside, along with a known analogue (2) and ten flavonoids (3-12), were isolated from the whole plant of Desmodium caudatum. Compounds 1 and 4 exhibited potent antioxidant activities with the IC₅₀ of 58.59 μM and 31.31 μM, respectively, which were approached to that of the positive control Vitamin C (IC₅₀ = 46.32 μM). Meanwhile, 12 showed moderate antioxidant activity with the IC₅₀ of 173.9 μM. Besides, compounds 3 and 6 inhibited the proliferation of HeLa cells with IC₅₀ values of 56.14 μM and 69.04 μM, respectively. Further studies indicated that 3 and 6 could dose-dependently induce PARP cleavage and might trigger caspase-3, 8, 9 activation to induce apoptosis. RXRα is an ideal anticancer target of nuclear receptor. The reporter gene assay of RXRα indicated that 3 and 6 could inhibited the 9-cis-RA induced RXRα transcription in a concentration-dependent manner.

Keywords:

• Desmodium caudatum
• phenolic glycoside
• flavonoids
• antioxidant
• anticancer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was financially supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U1605221) (No. 81773866), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 20720190079), and Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (No. 2019J007).