A review of the biological and pharmacological activities of saponins

Medicinal bulbous plants of South Africa and their traditional relevance in the control of infectious diseases.

Cancer is a major cause of death and the number of new cases, as well as the number of individuals living with cancer, is expanding continuously. Due to the enormous propensity of plants that synthesize mixtures of structurally diverse bioactive compounds, the plant kingdom is potentially a very diverse source of chemical constituents with tumor cytotoxic activity. Despite the successful utilization of few phytochemicals, such as vincristine and taxol, into mainstream cancer chemotherapy, commercial plant-derived anticancer formulations represent only one-fourth of the total repertoire of the available treatment options. Though significant progress has been made towards the characterization of isolated compounds and their structure-related activities, the complex composition of plant extracts, along with the lack of reproducibility of activity and the synergy between different, even unidentified, components of an extract, prohibits the full utilization of plants in pharmaceutical research. In this review,...

Terrestrial Plant-Derived Anticancer Agents and Plant Species Used in Anticancer Research

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2013/np/c3np70008a

The chemistry and biological activity of the Hyacinthaceae

Plant saponins are a group of naturally occuring triterpene or steroid glycosides which include a large number of biologically and pharmacologically active compounds Saponins have been shown in both in vitroand in vivoexperimental test systems during the last decade to possess a broad spectrum of biological and pharmacological activities This review will summarize some of the recent advances concerning cancer-related activity, immunostimulating, immunoadjuvant, antihepatotoxic, antiphlogistic, antiallergic, molluscicidal, hemolytic, antifungal, antiviral, and hypoglycemic activities In addition, the effects on the cardiovascular system and the central nervous system will be discussed together with other miscellaneous effects Studies of structure/activity relationships and mechanism of action will be presented

Bioactive saponins from plants: An update

Phytochemical studies of the bulbs of Scilla peruviana, Eucomis bicolor, Chionodoxa gigantea and C. luciliae gave respectively two new and two known, four new and two known, three known, and one new and five known lanosterol oligosaccharides. The structures of the new compounds were determined from spectroscopic data. A total of 19 lanosterols, including previously isolated compounds, were examined for inhibitory activity on 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol 13-acetate (TPA)-stimulated 32P incorporation into phospholipids of HeLa cells as the primary screening test to find new antitumor-promoter compounds.

Kazutomo Ori

Papers

Lanosterol oligosaccharides from the plants of the subfamily scilloideae and their antitumor-promoter activity