Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

New cytotoxic fatty acid esters from the black coral, Antipathes dichotoma

Mohamed Aziz Ghandourah¹, Hajer Siddique Alorfi²

¹Department of Marine Chemistry, Faculty of Marine Sciences; ²Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, PO Box 80203, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia.

For correspondence:- Hajer Alorfi Email: halorfi@kau.edu.sa

Accepted: 16 December 2018 Published: 31 January 2019

Citation: Ghandourah MA, Alorfi HS. New cytotoxic fatty acid esters from the black coral, Antipathes dichotoma. Trop J Pharm Res 2019; 18(1):69-74 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v18i1.11

© 2019 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To isolate new fatty acid esters from Antipathes dichotoma and investigate their cytotoxic effects on HepG2, WI-38, VERO and MCF-7 cells.

Methods: Antipathes dichotoma was collected using scuba at a depth of 10 to 20 m from the Red Sea, and the lyophilized sample (1500 g) was exhaustively extracted thrice using a mixture of chloroform and methanol (1:1, v/v). The extract was concentrated using a vacuum rotatory evaporator to obtain a brown gummy paste which was fractionated on a silica gel chromatography column and further purified using preparative thin layer chromatography (PTLC). The chemical structures of the newly isolated compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic methods such as infrared (IR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry (MS). The cytotoxicity of the isolated compounds was examined in HepG2, WI 38, VERO and MCF-7 cell lines.

Results: Three new aliphatic esters namely, (4Z, 7Z, 10Z, 13Z, 16Z)-1-hydroxynonadeca-4, 7, 10, 13, 16-pentaen-2-yl octanoate (1); (4Z, 7Z, 10Z, 13Z, 16Z)-1-hydroxynonadeca-4, 7, 10, 13, 16-pentaen-2-yl decanoate (2) and 1-hydroxynonadecan-2-yl-octanoate (3) were isolated from A. dichotoma. 1 and 2 displayed moderate cytotoxic activities against the examined cell lines with half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) ranging from 30.1 to 43.0 µg/mL, while compound 3 exhibited poor anti-cancer activity.

Conclusion: The results indicate that A. dichotoma is a reservoir of new compounds that have potential anticancer effects.

Keywords: Red Sea, Black coral, Antipathes dichotoma, Esters, Cytotoxicity