Extracto de alcaloides de Hippeastrum striatum (Lam.) H.E. Moore: análisis químico y actividad antiaceticolinesterásica

Abstract

The Amaryllidaceae species are extensively studied for their biological activities in severalpharmaceutical areas. The genus Hippeastrum has deciduous leaves, tunicated bulbs,inflorescences with two to seven flowers of different sizes and colors and is distributed fromArgentina to Mexico and the Caribbean, contributing for more than 50 of the 448 alkaloidssynthesized by the family. Among them, galanthamine is widely known to be a long-acting,selective, reversible, and competitive acetylcholinesterase inhibitor alkaloid, being animportant drug for the treatment of Alzheimer´s disease. As a part of the study of nativeAmaryllidaceae species from Argentina, the basic chloroform extract of Hippeastrumstriatum (OR11, MNES), was obtained and evaluated for its inhibitory activity againstacetylcholinesterase. The objective of this work was to confirm the presence of the activegalanthamine-type alkaloids galanthamine, sanguinine, and chlidanthine in the basicchloroform extract, and to evaluate its cholinesterase inhibitory activity. The thin layerchromatography analysis using reference standards of the three galanthamine-type alkaloids,showed the absence of them in the bulb extract. For the analysis of acetylcholinesteraseinhibitory activity, galanthamine was used as a positive control and the results exhibited thatthe extract is active with an IC50 value of 29.81µg/mL. H. striatum is a promising nativespecies for obtaining resources with anti-acetylcholinesterase action. Future assays, willprovide more light about the nature of the active non-identified compounds present in thisspecies extract.