Eight sesquiterpene lactones were isolated from the roots of Inula helenium and flowers of I. japonica. Among them, isoalantolactone (3) and santamarine (6) exhibited significant growth inhibitory activities against gynecologic cancer cell lines, while others weakly inhibited the growth of the cell lines (IC50 < or = 100 microM). In addition, 3 significantly inhibited the tumour growth of S180 ...

Artemisinin, a sesquiterpene lactone, is the active antimalarial constituent of Artemisia annua. Several fungal strains Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger and Picchia pastoris were used to biotransform artemisinin. Among these strains, A. flavus was the only microorganism capable of transforming artemisinin to deoxyartemisinin in higher yields than the previous repo...

Six new germacranolides, zawadskinolides A-F (1-6), and a new eudesmane glucoside, chrysantiloboside (7) were isolated from the aerial parts of Dendranthema zawadskii var. latilobum, along with thirteen known constituents. Their structures were elucidated by means of spectroscopic evidence. Bioassay showed that flavonoids such as apigenin (9), (-)-eriodictyol (10) and nepetin (12), as well as t...

background: artemisia diffusa contains a new type of sesquiterpene lactone with an endoperoxide group (tehranolide). objective: due to the existing similarity between the structures of tehranolide and artemisinin, it was hypothesized that tehranolide would have similar effects as artemisinin. in this study, the immunotherapeutic effec-tiveness of tehranolide was investigated by direct intra-tum...

Medicinal plants have been widely employed in treating various diseases for centuries and are still a major resource and repository that can be further exploited for a variety of infectious and non-infectious ailments. The popularity of medicinal herbs has grown significantly in recent years despite a dearth of information regarding their modes of action and continuing concerns over their effic...

Parthenium hysterophorus known as congress grass belongs to the family compositae. Direct contact with plant and plant parts, living or dead, result in dermatitis in mankind. Presence of pollen in air causes diseases, like fever and asthma (Kaur and Sharma, 1986; Lonkar et al., 1974; Rodriguez, 1975; Rodriguez et al., 1976a and b; Shen et al., 1976; Subba Rao et al., 1976, 1978). Live stocks ar...