Studies On The Antidiabetic Components Of Acorus.calamus Linn And Studies On The Flavonolignans Of Silybum Marianum (L) Gacntm.

This thesis mainly deals with two Traditional Chinese Medicines, Acorus. calamus Linn (Araceae) and Silybum marianum (L) Gacntm. (Cruciferae). The thesis is composed of two chapters.Part â… Studies on the antidiabetic Components of Acorus.calamus LinnAcorus calamus Linn., one of the most commonly used species of Acorus genus,distributed widely in China. Chemical investigations revealed that it contains phenylpropanoid, sesquiterpenes, plant sterols, long-chained fatty acids triterpenoids as well as flavonoids. Pharmacological studies show its activities of inhibiting bacteria, anti-falling sickness, tumor suppressing, spasmolytic and stomachic activities. Furthermore, this species was also used as a famous folk medicine to treat diabetes in Indonesia for a long time. We therefore initiate a program aiming at finding the active chemical constituents against diabetes guided by a -glucosidase inhibiting experiment. The main research results are listed below:1. Finding out the active fractions of Acorus calamus and the main chemical constituents of this fraction was confirmed;2. 15 compounds have been isolated from the active part, of which 14 structures were identified by spectral methods as:Epishyobunone (1)Hexadecanoic acid methyl ester (la)Octadecanoic acid methyl ester (1 b)P-asarone (2)Hexadecanoic (3)Isoshyobunone (4)10-methyl-isocalammendiol (5)P-sitosterol (6a)Stigmasterol (6b)Isocalammendiol (7)5-hydroxy-7, 8 ,3 ',4 '-tetramethoxyflavone (8)3 P ,22 a ,23-trihydroxyolean-30-methoxycarbonyl-12-ene-22-O-I- rhamnoside (9)5,4'-dihydroxy-7,8-dimethoxyflavone (10)p-sistosterol-3-O-p-D-glucopyranoside (11)Part IIStudies on the Flavonolignans of Silybum marianum (L) Gacntm.The main flavones of Silybum marianum (L) Gacntm. are flavonolignans just like silybin,isosilybin and so on. Flavonolignan is a kind of flavones which is constructed by catechol flavones and phenylpropanoids. A lot of researches indicated that flavonolignans have many bioactivies such as antioxidant, hepatoprotective, anti-tumor and lowering blood lipid. The representative compounds of flavonolignans are silybin, isosilybin, silichristin, silidianin and 2, 3-dehydrosilybin which were isolated from silymarin. among which silybin was the most active one. Some of the compounds have been applied in the clinical test, but the bioavailability is limited due to their poor solubility. Therefore, series of derivatives of silybin are required to study the structure-activity relationships of flavonolignans. To meet the semi-synthesis needs, the extracting methods of silybin were studied and the main chemical constituents from Silybum marianum was obtained. This work composed of two parts:1. Optimizing the extracting and isolating methods, establishing a method to analyze the content of Silybum marianum flavones.2. 3 compounds have been isolated from the active part, and their structures were identified, by chemical and spectral methods, as 2,3-dehydrosilybin(12), silybin(13), isosilybin(14).