Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, are understood as occurring through genetic, cellular, and multifactor pathophysiological mechanisms. Several natural products such as flavonoids have been reported in the literature for having the capacity to cross the blood‐brain barrier and slow the progression of such diseases. The present article reports on in silico enzymatic target studies and natural products as inhibitors for the treatment of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. In this study we evaluated 39 flavonoids using prediction of molecular properties and in silico docking studies, while comparing against 7 standard reference compounds: 4 for Parkinson’s and 3 for Alzheimer’s. Osiris analysis revealed that most of the flavonoids presented no toxicity and good absorption parameters. The Parkinson’s docking results using selected flavonoids as compared to the standards with four proteins revealed similar binding energies, indicating that the compounds 8‐prenylnaringenin, europinidin, epicatechin gallate, homoeriodictyol, capensinidin, and rosinidin are potential leads with the necessary pharmacological and structural properties to be drug candidates. The Alzheimer’s docking results suggested that seven of the 39 flavonoids studied, being those with the best molecular docking results, presenting no toxicity risks, and having good absorption rates (8‐prenylnaringenin, europinidin, epicatechin gallate, homoeriodictyol, aspalathin, butin, and norartocarpetin) for the targets analyzed, are the flavonoids which possess the most adequate pharmacological profiles.

Two ent-kaurene diterpenoids, ent-15- β -acetyloxy-kaur-16-en-19-oic acid (xylopic acid) 1 and ent-7-oxo-kaur-16-en-19-oic acid 2 were isolated from the fruits of Xylopia aethiopica. Chemical manipulation of xylopic acid yielded ent-kaurane derivatives 3, 4, 5, and 6. Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic analysis, including 1 D- and 2 D-NMR spectroscopies. The antiproliferative activities of compounds 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 were tested on breast MCF7 and SkBr3, endometrial Ishikawa, ovarian BG-1, mesothelioma IST-MES1 and hepatocellular HepG2 human tumor cells, and on mammalian MRC-10 fibroblast cells. Ketone 2 showed significant antiproliferative activity against MFC7 human breast cancer cells (IC₅₀ = 3 ± 1 µM) and A549 pulmonary adenocarcinoma (8 ± 1 µM), that was higher than the well-known anti-cancer agent cisplatin (IC₅₀ = 19 ± 3 and 15 ± 4 µM, respectively). Graphical Abstract

There are two independent molecules in the asymmetric unit of the title compound, C₁₆H₁₅NO₄, which was isolated from fruits of Zanthoxylum leprieurii. The atoms of the three rings of each molecule are close to coplanar with the largest deviations from the least-squares planes being 0.084 (3) Å and 0.069 (2) Å. Each molecule features an intramolecular O—H...·O hydrogen bond. In the crystal, C—H...·O hydrogen-bonding interactions link the molecules into a three-dimensional network.

Arborinine is an acridone alkaloids obtained from different natural sources including in the majority bark, seed, leaves of plants species of Rutaceae family among which Teclea gerrardii, Zanthoxylum leprieurii and Teclea trichocarpa, Erthela bahiensis, Ruta angustifolia,, Ruta suavolenses.. This alkaloid is extensively studied due to its great pharmacological potential, which includes anticancer, antimicrobial, antiparasitic, antifeedant and antioxidant activities among others. Arborinine block heme-mediated protein oxidation and degradation markers for heme-induced oxidative stress; was predicted virtually for a critical evaluation by In silico target fishing for rationalized ligand discovery by inhibiting acetylchlolinesterase with IC₅₀ value 34.7 ± 71µM; displayed potent in vitro activities against chloroquine sensitive HB3 cell line and chloroquine resistance K1 cell line with IC50 value 3.85 ± 0.11μM and 9.34 ± 0.37 μM; showed the good anticancer activity on three human cancer line viz human colon cancer COLO-205, human ovarian cancer OVCAR-3, Human cervical cancer human breast cancer and T-47D line with GI₅₀ value ˂10μg/ml and presented antimicrobial activities against resistant microbial strains. The overall synthesis of Arborinine has been done and the key stapes are the Ullmann condensation followed by the cyclisation with Eaton’s reagent. It undergoes a few structural modification reactions such as selective methylation and demethylation, electrophilic substitution. Acetylation, benzoylation. This review present the chemistry and the biological properties of Arborinine: methods of isolation from plant crude extract, its characterization as well as their derivatives obtained by structural modification including structure activity relationship are also described.

Zanthoxylum leprieurii is a medicinal plant widely studied due to its great phytochemical diversity, especially its acrinonic alkaloids, which have shown to be promising anticancer candidates. The aim of this work was to promote the isolation of acridonic alkaloids from fruits of Z. leprieurii and carried out absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy studies with calf thymus DNA and BSA. Five acridone alkaloids have been isolated, including the first description of 3-desmethoxy arborinine (2). In the study of interaction with biomacromolecules it was observed that all compounds show interaction with calf thymus DNA and BSA. Compound 2 promoted the bigger increase in BSA fluorescence (3.01%) with a lower fluorescence quenching constant (Ksv = 0.13 × 10⁴). Taken together, these results reaffirm the great phytochemical diversity of Z. leprieurii, and show that acridonic alkaloids have an affinity with both DNA and BSA, therefore providing clues to their mechanisms of action related to their anticancer activities.