Discovery of anti-inflammatory compounds from Australian rainforest plants

Abstract

Inflammation is an important biological process for maintaining the body's homeostasis and is essential for successfully fighting pathogens as well as the repair of damaged tissue in the body. However, inflammatory processes are also involved in the onset and maintenance of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, type 2 diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. The currently available list of approved anti-inflammatory agents mainly consists of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and anti-inflammatory biologics. Despite this arsenal, therapy is often not effective enough or is hampered by severe side effects including stomach ulcers, renal toxicity, and increase in the risk of thrombotic events. Thus, the discovery of safer anti-inflammatory agents with less severe side effects is still extremely desirable for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. This thesis describes the screening of crude ethanolic extracts of 100 Australian rainforest plant samples from the Northern Queensland region of Australia. It goes on to explore the chemical diversity of three selected plants samples with potent anti-inflammatory activity. This study led to the isolation of 14 pure compounds, out of which 7 are reported for the first time. The anti-inflammatory activity of these compounds have been demonstrated as their potential to downregulate nitric oxide production in LPS/IFN-? activated RAW 264.7 macrophage cell line.

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English