Using UHPLC-MS Profiling for the Discovery of New Dihydro-β-Agarofurans from Australian Celastraceae Plant Extracts

An analytical method using UHPLC-MS was developed and applied to 16 crude CH₂Cl₂ extracts from Australian Celastraceae plants; the endemic plant materials were accessed from Griffith University's NatureBank resource and included bark, fruit, leaf, root, twig and mixed samples, all of which were collected from Queensland, Australia. The generated UHPLC-MS data were analysed and dereplicated using the scientific databases Dictionary of Natural Products and SciFinder Scholar in order to potentially identify new dihydro-β-agarofurans from local Celastraceae plants. These investigations led to the large-scale extraction and isolation work on a prioritised fruit sample that belonged to the rainforest plant Denhamia celastroides. Chemical investigations resulted in the purification of four new natural products, denhaminols O⁻R (1⁻4), along with the related and known compound, denhaminol G (5). The structures of all the new compounds were determined via detailed analysis of NMR and MS data.