Cytotoxic triquinane-type sesquiterpenoids from the endophytic fungus Cerrena sp. A593

Abstract

The culture broth of Cerrena sp. A593, which was isolated from Pogostemon cablin, showed potent cytotoxicity against several human tumor cell lines. The following chemical study resulted in the isolation of two new triquinane-type sesquiterpenoids, named cerrenins D (1) and E (2), along with two known compounds plerocybellone A (3) and chloriolin B (4). Their structures were fully assigned with the aid of extensive spectroscopic analysis (¹H and ¹³C NMR, HSQC, HMBC, ¹H-¹H COSY, HRESIMS, and IR) and data from the literature. Moreover, cytotoxic activity in vitro of compounds 1–4 were evaluated against SF-268, MCF-7, NCI-H460, and HepG-2 tumor cell lines. The new compound 1 exhibited weak growth inhibitory activity against all the four tumor cell lines with IC₅₀ values of 41.01, 14.43, 29.67, 44.32 μM.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Cerrena sp.
• cytotoxicity
• Pogostemon cablin
• sesquiterpenoids

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31600271), Guangdong Provincial Project for Science and Technology (2107A020211023), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2015A030313710), Pearl River Science and Technology New Star Fund of Guangzhou (201806010080), and GDAS’ Special Project of Science and Technology Development (No. 2017GDASCX-0819).