, 2008). The species Garcinia brasiliensis (Mart.), also known as R. brasiliensis Planch AZD2281 and Triana, is native to the Amazon region and is cultivated throughout Brazil. In Brazil, it is popularly known as bacuri, bacupari, porocó and bacuripari, and in Bolivia, it is called guapomo. It is used by the population for anti-inflammatory ( Castardo et al., 2008 and Santa-Cecília et al., 2011), antinociceptive ( Santa-Cecília et al., 2011), antioxidant and antitumour ( Coelho et al., 2008) therapies. In Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, the Philippines and India, ripe fruits are used in
traditional medicine to treat abdominal pain, diarrhoea, dysentery, wound infections, suppuration XL184 research buy and chronic ulcer ( Cui et al., 2010).
As part of a bioprospecting program seeking to identify new plant metabolites with antioxidant activity, this paper reports the identification and the evaluation of the antioxidant activities of the main phenolic constituents of the epicarp of G. brasiliensis. Four compounds were isolated by extraction of the epicarp with ethyl acetate: 1,3,6,7-tetrahydroxyxanthone (1), morelloflavone (2), morelloflavone-7″-O-β-d-glycoside (fukugeside) (3) and the novel compound morelloflavone-4′″-O-β-d-glycoside (4) ( Fig. 1). The occurrence of xanthone (1), morelloflavone selleck products (2), and the biflavonoid fukugeside (3) in G. brasiliensis is consistent with the compounds reported in other Garcinia species, such as Garcinia garderiana ( Botta et al., 1984, Castardo et al., 2008, Luzzi et al., 1997 and Rodrigues et al., 2000), Garcinia
mangostana ( Carpenter, Locksley, & Scheinmann, 1969) and Garcinia morella ( Karanjgaokar, Radhakrishnan, & Venkatarama, 1967). Thus, the isolation of compounds 1, 2 and 3 from the species G. brasiliensis indicates that these compounds may be considered as chemotaxonomic markers for the genus Garcinia. The structures of the isolated compounds were elucidated using IR, MS, 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy and by comparison with data from the literature. The extracts and fractions were concentrated using a rotary evaporator under reduced pressure at 45 °C. The ethyl acetate extract was purified by column chromatography (CC), using silica gel 60 [230–400 mesh (0.200–0.360 nm), Merck®] as the stationary phase, eluted with increasing polarity mixtures of n-hexane/ethyl acetate and ethyl acetate/ethanol. Comparative thin-layer chromatography (CTLC) experiments employed an aqueous suspension of silica gel PF 254 7749 (Merck®), supported on glass plates. The substances were stained with iodine vapour, vanillin-sulphuric acid (3%) reagent or 1% FeCl3 in ethanol and visualised using ultra-violet radiation (λ = 254 and 366 nm).