Dilignans with a chromanol motif discovered by molecular networking from the stem barks of magnolia obovata and their proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 expression inhibitory activity

Abstract

Natural products have been fundamental materials in drug discovery. Traditional strategies for observing natural products with novel structure and/or biological activity are challenging due to large cost and time consumption. Implementation of the MS/MS‐based molecular networking strategy with the in silico annotation tool is expected to expedite the dereplication of secondary metabolites. In this study, using this tool, two new dilignans with a 2‐ phenyl‐3‐chromanol motif, obovatolins A (1) and B (2), were discovered from the stem barks of Magnolia obovata Thunb. along with six known compounds (3–8), expanding chemical diversity of lignan skeletons in this natural source. Their structures and configurations were elucidated using spectroscopic data. All isolates were evaluated for their PCSK9 mRNA expression inhibitory activity. Obovatolins A (1) and B (2), and magnolol (3) showed potent lipid controlling activities. To identify transcriptionally controlled genes by 1 along with downregulation of PCSK9, using small set of genes (42 genes) related to lipid metabolism selected from the database, focused bioinformatic analysis was carried out. As a result, it showed the correlations between gene expression under presence of 1, which led to detailed insight of the lipid metabolism caused by 1.