Abstract
The n-BuOH-soluble portion of the 95% EtOH extract of red fermented rice fermented with the yellow mutant of the fungus Monascus purpureus BCRC 38113 (Monascaceae) led to the isolation of one new pyran-2-one derivative, namely peroxymonascuspyrone (1), along with nine known compounds, monasfluore A (2), monasfluore B (3), 3-epi-betulinic acid (4), 3-epi-betulinic acid acetate (5), α-tocospiro A (6), friedelan-3-one (7), α-cadinol (8), anticopalol (9), and spathulenol (10). Interestingly, this is the first report of a naturally occurring pyran-2-one skeleton isolated from Monascus sp. Their structures and relative configurations were elucidated by spectroscopic methods, including 1D- and 2D-NMR (1H,1H-COSY, HMQC, HMBC and NOESY), as well as low- and high-resolution mass spectrometric analyses. In addition, cytotoxicities against MCF-7, NCI-H460 and SF-268 cancer cell lines were measured in vitro; the results revealed that these metabolites have no cytotoxicity against the selected tumour cells.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank native English speaker Dr Lois McBeth for correcting this article before submission. This investigation was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Republic of China (97-EC-17-A-17-R7-0525).
Notes
†These authors contributed equally to this article.