Chemical constituents of Sophora flavescens Ait. and cytotoxic activities of two new compounds

Abstract

A chemical investigation of Sophora flavescens Ait. identified 6 compounds. On the basis of spectroscopic data, they were determined to be flavonoids and their analogues, among which were two previously undescribed compounds, sophoflavanone G (1) and sophoflavanone H (2). The inhibitory effects of new compounds against five human tumour cell lines were evaluated in vitro by MTT assays, which revealed potential inhibitory effects with IC₅₀ values < 20 mM, in particular, compound 1 has shown significant cytotoxicity for several tumour cells with IC₅₀ values around 20 mM, which was similar to cisplatin and potential to be used as tumour drugs.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Sophora flavescens
• flavonoid
• isopentene group
• cytotoxicity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC1701200) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81374061, 81903789); the Program for Innovative Research Team of the Ministry of Education and Program for Liaoning Innovative Research Team in University.