Current Organic Chemistry - Volume 5, Issue 9, 2001

The genus Aglaia is the source of a unique group of natural products featuring a cyclopenta[b]tetrahydrobenzofuran skeleton. Commonly these compounds, which until now include more than 50 naturally occurring derivatives, are named after the parent compound, rocaglamide, which was described for the first time almost twenty years ago. This review highlights the chemical diversity of rocaglamide derivatives and of biog Read More

Polysaccharides from plants have been the subject of study for a very long time, but mainly for their physical properties and industrial use based on these properties. Over the last 20 years there has been an ever increasing interest in the biological activity of biomolecules. These studies became possible as a result of the scientific development of isolation, purification and characterisation methods concomi-tant with the developm Read More

Starfish extracts have been reported to exhibit a broad spectrum of pharmacological properties, which are related to the presence of typical steroidal oli-goglycosides. In the animal kingdom, these metabolites have only been found in the marine phylum Echinodermata and particularly in the class Asteroidea (sea stars).This communication offers a general view of steroid oligoglycoside distribution among starfishes and foc Read More

Biotransformation of plants secondary compounds by the variety of organism sometimes afford novel and / or useful compounds. The ability of organism metabolizing those natural products and the metabolic fate of those in nature can also be revealed by this investigation. Lignans and neolignans are well known plants secondary compounds which are widely distributed in terrestrial plants, and have attracted much atte Read More