Natural cyclopeptides are hot spots in chemical and pharmaceutical fields because of the wide spreading bio-resources, complex molecular structures and various bioactivities. Bio-producers of cyclopeptides distribute over almost every kingdom from bacteria to plants and animals. Many cyclopeptides contain non-coded amino acids and non-pepditic bonds. Most exciting characteristic of cyclopeptides is a range of interesting bioactivities such as antibiotics gramicidin-S (2), vancomycin (3) and daptomycin (4), immunosuppressive cyclosporin-A (1) and astin-C (8), and anti-tumor aplidine (5), RA-V (6) and RA-VII (7). Compounds 1-4 are being used in clinics; compounds 5-8 are in the stages of clinical trial or as a candidate for drug research. In this review, the progress in chemical and bioactive studies on these important natural bioactive cyclopeptides 1-8 are introduced, mainly including discovery, bioactivity, mechanism, QSAR and synthesis.

The petroleum ether fraction of ethanol extract of Acorus tatarinowii were separated by column chromatography and recrystallization to afford seven compounds. On the spectroscopic analysis, they were identified as 1-hydroxy-7(11),9-guaiadien-8-one (1), calamenone(2), cis-asarone(3), chrysophanol (4), physcion (5), emodin (6), (+)-galbacin (7). Compound 1 is a new compound. Compounds 4-7 were isolated from this plant for the first time.
Acorus ; chemistry ; Ethanol ; Ether ; Plant Extracts ; analysis