Rhodiola Rosea Chemical Composition

Rhodiola rosea L. is a species which comes from Rhodiola genus of Crassulaceae. As a valuable resource of the medicinal plants, Rhodiola rosea L. has the superordinary efficacy in health and wide distribution in geography. In recent years, some papers have reported the studies of the Rhodiola genus including Rhodiola rosea L.. The studies have an progressive tendency year by year. In order to clarify more deeply the active substance from the preparation of Rhodiola rosea L. which showed the pharmacological activity in the clinic. The work to elucidate the structure of the constituents from the 30% ethanol extract of Rhodiola rosea L. collected in Xingjiang province were carried out in this paper. The solvent extraction together with column chromatography was used for isolation of chemical constituents, and fifteen compounds were isolated and purified. By means of spectroscopic analysis and physico-chemical properties, among them, the structures of fourteen compounds were identified as p-tyrosol (1) ,kaempferol (2) , gallic acid (3) , kaempferol-7-O-α-L-rhamnoside (4) , rhodionin (5) ,β-sitosterol (6) , rhodiosin (7) , rosmarinci acid (8) , salidroside (9) , quercetin (10) , rutin (11), dancosterol (12) , D-fructose (13) , rhodiolin(14) respectively. Compound 8 and 13 were isolated from Rhodiola genus for the first time, Compound 11 was isolated from Rhodiola rosea L. for the first time.Meanwhile, by means of MTT assay to estimate the activity of some compounds with the percentage of cell death data, this paper investigated the inhibitiory effect of the part flavonoids (namely Compounds 2,4,5,7,10 and 11) on UV-induced A375-S2 cell death. Only Compound 7 showed the inhibitiory effect on UV-induced A375-S2 cell death, however Compounds 2,4,5,10 and 11 showed the poor activity. As same time, all these compounds showed no the cytotoxic effect on normal A375-S2 cells.