Cytotoxic constituents from Psoralea corylifolia

Abstract

Bioassay directed isolation of the EtOAc extract from a traditional Chinese medicine Psoralea corylifolia resulted in the purification of two isoflavonoids, corylifols D (1) and E (2), along with four known ones. The structures of 1 and 2 were determined by extensive 1D and 2D NMR and MS data analyses. When tested against HepG2 and Hep3B hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines, corylifol A (4) displayed IC₅₀ values of 4.6 and 13.5 μg/ml, respectively.

Keywords:

• Psoralea corylifolia
• Fabaceae
• cytotoxicity
• isoflavonoids
• corylifol D
• corylifol E

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by a grant from Natural Science Foundation of Qinghai Province (No. 2012-Z-904) and a grant from Innovation Capacity Building in Guangxi Science and Technology Agency (No. 10100027-3).