A New Potent Anti-cancer Corosolic Ester Identified from the Super Miracle Plant Hippophae rhamnoides (Sea buckthorn)

Hippophae rhamnoides L, commonly called Sea buckthorn, is native to Asia and Europe and and known for its nutritional and medicinal values. The aim of the present study was to investigate the anti-cancer constituents of H. rhamnoides. Among the three isolated compounds namely: 1-(2-hydroxynaphthalen-1-yl) ethan-1-one (1), Oleanolic acid (2), and Hippocorosolate (3), compound 3 was a new corosolic ester derivative. The isolated compounds (2 and 3) displayed anticancer activity against lung (NCI-H460) and breast (MCF-7) cancer cell lines with IC50 values of ~3 µM and ~6 µM, respectively. However, compound 1 was active only against breast cancer cells with IC50 value of ~43 µM. These compounds displayed only weak interactions with minor groove of DNA in DNA-ligand conformational studies and therefore, structural DNA damage was not noted in electrophoretic mobility experiments. It was concluded that new compound 2 possessed more potent anticancer activity than that of known compound 3 against lung cancer cell line.