•  
  •  
 

Turkish Journal of Chemistry

Abstract

Natural compounds obtained from plants have always held great potential for drug discovery and, as such, have drawn the attention of researchers as novel antifungal molecules that can be effective against fungal resistance. The antifungal activity of sesquiterpene lactones has been extensively investigated against various fungal strains, but there is limited data on their antifungal activity against Candida species. Sesquiterpene lactones are abundant in the Asteraceae family, and 90% of identified sesquiterpene lactones have been isolated from members of this family. Three extracts obtained from the aerial parts of Centaurea salicifolia var. salicifolia, which had not been investigated prior to this study, were tested for their antifungal activity against Candida albicans (ATCC 90028), C. dubliniensis (NCPF 3949a), C. auris (NCPF 8977), C. inconspicua (NCPF 8523), and C. krusei (ATCC 6258) and exhibited minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values ranging between 6.25 μg/mL and 12.5 μg/mL. Due to its rich sesquiterpene lactone content, isolation studies conducted on a dichloromethane maceration extract (CsDCM-M) yielded cynaropicrin (SL1), vahlenin (SL2), maximolide (SL3), pectolinaringenin (F1), centaureidin (F2), and axillarin (F3). The isolation of vahlenin from plants has been reported in only two studies, published in 1974 and 1978; thus, the present work constitutes the first documented isolation of vahlenin since the 1970s. Relative stereochemistry elucidation along with the 2D-NMR (COSY, HSQC, HMBC, and NOESY) data for vahlenin is given for the first time. Antifungal tests against the abovementioned Candida strains were also performed using all of the isolated compounds, and they exhibited promising MIC values between 12.5 μg/mL and 50 μg/mL. This is the first report on the antifungal activity of vahlenin and maximolide against C. auris, C. inconspicua, and C. dubliniensis.

Author ORCID Identifier

SELİN TUFAN: 0000-0002-9173-3423

DİLEK ŞATANA: 0000-0002-8827-1504

NUR TAN: 0000-0001-7958-1917

DOI

10.55730/1300-0527.3906

Keywords

Antifungal, Candida, Candida auris, flavonoids, natural compounds, sesquiterpene lactones

First Page

412

Last Page

422

Publisher

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Download

Included in

Chemistry Commons

Share

COinS