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Published on: May 31, 2020
Cytotoxic polyhydroxy sterols from the Egyptian Red Sea soft coral Sarcophyton acutum
Sabry A H Zidan1, Reda A Abdelhamid2, Montaser Al-Hammady3
1Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmacy, Al-Azhar University, Assiut-Branch, Assiut 71524, Egypt; Department of Pharmacognosy, Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hiroshima University, 1-2-3 Kasumi, Minami-ku, Hiroshima 734-8553, Japan.
Abstract:
The methanolic extract and its sub-extracts (viz, n-hexane, DCM, EtOAc and MeOH) of the soft coral Sarcophyton acutum were evaluated as anti-Leishmania major and as anticancer (against the HepG2, MCF-7, and A549 cell lines) using the MTT assay. Six polyhydroxy sterols (1-6) were isolated from the most active cytotoxic and anti-leishmanial EtOAc-soluble fraction. Their structures were established as two new polyhydroxy sterols, acutumosterols A (1) and B (2), and four known structural analogues (3-6) by intensive spectroscopic analyses, and by comparison with data of related compounds. Compound 4 exerted noticeable cytotoxicity against HepG2 cell line (IC50 17.2 ± 1.5 μg/mL), while the other pure isolates showed weak to moderate cytotoxicity (24.8 ± 2.8-57.2 ± 5.2). The results were discussed in relation to the structural features of these closely related sterols.
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