Planta Med 2014; 80 - PD55
DOI: 10.1055/s-0034-1382476

Bioassay-guided isolation of active compounds and fingerprinting of an edible nut toward the development of a diabetic zebrafish model

NA Eggers 1, U Muñoz Acuña 2, E Kane 3, S McGraw 3, Y Vodovotz 4, EJ Carcache de Blanco 1, 2
  • 1Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy
  • 2Division of Pharmacy Practice, College of Pharmacy
  • 3Department of Anthropology
  • 4Department of Food Science and Technology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210

A fruit-bearing tree from West Africa, Sacoglottis gabonensis, is used in cultural medicine to treat fever, diarrhea, infections, hypertension, and diabetes.1 The fleshy fruit encases a woody seed containing 2 – 5 waxy nuts. Despite the seed's resistance to cracking, these nuts comprise 50 – 60% of the diet of sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys), a predominately terrestrial West African monkey that retrieves the food item from the forest floor.2 A colony of sooty mangabeys being studied at Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Atlanta), contains a significant percentage of sooty mangabeys who have developed type 2 diabetes, and we hypothesize that this is a consequence of removal from their native diet. To test this and the potential role of S. gabonensis in the prevention or treatment of type 2 diabetes, the seeds are being investigated through in vitro and zebrafish in vivo assays as part of an anti-diabetes drug discovery project. Bioassay-guided fractionation and fingerprinting; bioactivity for anti-diabetes molecular targets NFκB, PPAR-γ, and PARP-5; and preliminary in vivo data from development of the diabetic zebrafish model will be presented.

Dounias, E. Humiriaceae. In Plant Resources of Tropical Africa 7(2). Lemmens, R.H.M.J., Louppe, D. & Oteng-Amoako, A.A., Ed.; PROTA Foundation: Wageningen, Netherlands, 2012; p 562 – 565.

McGraw, W. S.; Vick, A. E.; Daegling, D. J. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 2011, 144, 140 – 153