A new polyacetylene glucoside from Vernonia scorpioides and its potential antihyperglycemic effect

Natural polyacetylene compounds have been found mainly in seven botanical families and remain underexplored and understudied, despite its inherent chemical and biological reactivity, due to the presence of conjugated triple bonds. Some polyacetylene glucosides have been found to stimulate glucose uptake in C5BL/ks-db/db obese diabetic mice, and since polyacetylene glucosides previously found in Vernonia scorpioides showed little to none cytotoxicity, in this study the antihyperglycemic potential of a new V. scorpioides polyacetylene glucoside has been accessed in order to shine a new light on the biological activity of this unique scaffold. For the isolation of this new compound an optimized method of Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC) is for the first time described together with its X-ray data. The results demonstrate that 3,4-dihydrovernoniyne-4-O-β-glucoside has significant effect on glycaemia at low dose 0.5 mg/kg, and pointing that the anti-hyperglycemic effect may be due in part to the inhibition of intestinal disaccharidases.