Isolation of terpenic compounds from the methanolic extract of Euphorbia lagascae. Screening of their in vitro activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Staphylococcus aureus

Abstract

For as long as man can remember, plants have been used worldwide for the treatment of diseases. Today, many of the drugs currently used are derived from natural products or have dependent upon a natural product for their development and the recent discoveries of the antimalarial artemisinin and the anticancer agent taxol indicate the continuing importance of plant species in drug discovery.2 In recent years, a great number of diterpenoids with lathyrane and jatrophane structures have been isolated from Euphorbia species, some of them possessing interesting bioactivity, namely as modulators of multidrug resistance. In this communication, we are reporting on the isolation, structure elucidation and antibacterial activity of four terpenic compounds isolated from the methanolic extract of Euphorbia lagascae aerial parts (figure 1).