Bioactivity-Guided Fractionation of Selected Botanicals

Our collaborative team has used classical phytochemical drug discovery methods to perform activity-guided fractionation on a number of botanical agents that have been introduced to the U.S. market, of which several were incompletely chemically characterized at the time of examination [1]. The elucidation of the chemical nature of the active constituent(s) of botanical dietary supplements is required both to gain a better mechanistic insight into the mode of biological action of the product and to facilitate quality control method development. The various in vitro bioassays used in our work have involved the determination of antioxidant, aromatase inhibition, cancer cell line cytotoxicity, cytoprotective, and quinone reductase induction effects. Botanicals examined recently have included African mango (Irvingia gabonensis), black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa), mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), and noni (Morinda citrifolia). The botanical dietary supplements investigated have been found to contain complex mixtures of often potently active principles, with some of these compounds being previously unreported in the phytochemical literature. Acknowledgements: Partial support of this research was obtained from faculty start-up funding from the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center. Reference: [1] Kinghorn AD, Chai H-B, et al. (2011) Fitoterapia 82: 71–79.