Dereplication of pentacyclic triterpenoidls in plants by GC-EI/MS

Three common plant-derived pentacyclic triterpenoids, oleanolic acid (1), betulinic acid (2) and ursolic acid (3), have been found to exhibit moderate anti-tubercular activity in a microplate alamar blue assay. In order to facilitate the discovery of novel antitubercular leads with diverse chemical structures, a new and rapid GC-EI/MS method was developed simultaneously and unambiguously to dereplicate 1-3 as their methyl esters with limits of detection of 25.6, 26.9 and 26.8 ng, respectively. Copyright (C) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.