Terrestrial plants from Australia’s arid zone and deserts have received little attention in terms of bioactive profiling and secondary metabolite discovery. The Australian desert shrub Frankenia foliosa and Eremophila macdonnellii from the Simpson Desert were chosen as a novel species for investigation. F. foliosa has revealed the first B-ring 5,6-seco-steroid (1) isolated from plant and displayed inhibitory activity against head and neck SCC cancer cell lines that contain the cdc25A phosphatase protein with IC50 = ~8.0 µM. E. macdonnellii has isolated one new, and six known, furofuran lignans. The new lignan (2) displayed moderate anti-cancer activity against the breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) and hypopharyngeal cancer cell line (FaDu) with IC50 = 10.0 µM and IC50 =20 µM, respectively.
1) Tan Y.P., Savchenko A.I., Broit N, Boyle, G.M., Parsons, P.G., and Williams C. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2017; 11:1498-1501.