The medicinal plant Holboellia fargesii REAUB. (Lardizabalaceae) is a tree which grows in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its stems, roots, and fruits have been used as folk medicine for the treatment of cough, lumbago, nephritis and abdominal hernia in Yunnan Province. 1,2) However, there has been no previous chemical study of this plant. Preliminary evaluation indicated that H. fargesii contains saponins. The potential medicinal importance and our continuing interest in the chemistry of saponins prompted us to initiate a chemical investigation of this plant. In this paper, we report the isolation and structure elucidation of five new triterpenoid saponins (1-5) from the roots of this species.
Results and DiscussionAn ethanolic extract of roots of H. fargesii was suspended in water and then partitioned successively with EtOAc and nBuOH. The n-BuOH soluble fraction, on chromatographic purification over Diaion HP-20 resin, followed by repeated medium-pressure liquid chromatography (MPLC) and HPLC purification, gave five new triterpenoid saponins, termed fargosides A-E (1-5).Fargoside A (1) gave quasi-molecular ions at m/z 775 [MϩNa] ϩ and 791 [MϩK] ϩ by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) MS. The molecular formula of C 40 H 64 O 13 was confirmed by high resolution (HR)-FAB-MS. The IR spectrum of 1 showed an absorption bond for a carbonyl group at 1685 cm
Ϫ1. The 13 C-NMR spectrum showed 40 carbon signals, of which 29 were assigned to the aglycon moiety and 11 were assigned to the sugar moiety (Tables 1-3 5, 16.5, 17.4, 25.7, 26.1 and 27.9, and sp 2 hybrid carbons at d 122.7 (d) and 144.4 (s), together with information from the 1 H-NMR spectrum (six methyl proton singlets and a broad triplet olefinic proton at d 5.54), indicated that the aglycon had an olean-12-ene skeleton.3) Detailed analysis of various two-dimensional (2D) NMR spectra such as double-quantum filtered 1 H-1 H shift correlation spectroscopy (DQF-COSY), heteronuclear multiple quantum coherence (HMQC), heteronuclear multiple bond correlation (HMBC) and phase-sensitive nuclear Overhauser enhancement spectroscopy (NOESY) spectra indicated that the structural features in the A, B, C and D rings of the aglycon were similar to those of oleanolic acid. 4) However, direct bond and long-range correlation data suggested that one of the geminal methyl groups at C-20 had been replaced by a hydroxyl group, forming 29-noroleanolic acid. In the NOESY spectrum (Fig. 1), H-18 was correlated with the methyl group at C-20, indicating that the hydroxyl group was in an a-configuration. These results suggested that the aglycon of 1 was 3b,20a-dihydroxy-29-norolean-12-en-28-oic acid. A related compound, 3b,20x-dihydroxy-30(or 29)-