Contribution of Meliaceous plants in furnishing lead compounds for antiplasmodial and insecticidal drug development.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Malaria remains one of the greatest threats to human life especially in the tropical and sub-tropical regions where it claims hundreds of thousands of lives of young children every year. Meliaceae represent a large family of trees and shrubs, which are widely used in African traditional medicine for the treatment of several ailments including fever due to malaria. The in vitro and in vivo antiplasmodial as well as insecticidal investigations of their extracts or isolated compounds have led to promising results but to the best of our knowledge, no specific review on the traditional uses, phytochemistry of the antiplasmodial, insecticidal and cytotoxic lead compounds and extracts of Meliaceae plants has been compiled.

A rotameric tryptamide alkaloid from the roots of Vepris lecomteana (Pierre) Cheek & T. Heller (Rutaceae).

A rotameric tryptamide alkaloid (1a-1b) was isolated from the methanolic extract of the roots of Vepris lecomteana together with the known compounds anhydroevoxine (2), lecomtequinoline C (3), evoxine (4), N-methylflindersine (5), evoxanthine (6), hesperidin, lupeol, β-sitosterol and stigmasterol. The previously not reported 7-(3-anilino-2-hydroxyprenyloxy)-8-methoxydictamine (2a) was obtained by opening the epoxide of anhydroevoxine (2). The structures of above compounds were determined by comprehensive spectroscopic analyses of 1D and 2D NMR, EI-/ESI-MS, X-ray crystallography and comparison with the reported data.

Antimicrobial Furoquinoline Alkaloids from Vepris lecomteana (Pierre) Cheek & T. Heller (Rutaceae).

Three new prenylated furoquinoline alkaloids named lecomtequinoline A (), B (), and C (), together with the known compounds anhydroevoxine (), evoxine (), dictamnine (), methylflindersine (), evoxanthine (), hesperidin, lupeol, -sitosterol, stigmasterol, -sitosterol-3---d-glucopyranoside, stearic acid, and myristyl alcohol, were isolated by bioassay-guided fractionation of the methanolic extracts of leaves and stem of . The structures of compounds were determined by spectroscopic methods (NMR, MS, UV, and IR) and by comparison with previously reported data. Crude extracts of leaves and stem displayed high antimicrobial activity, with Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) (values of 10.