Development of diversity-enhanced extracts of Curcuma zedoaria and their new sesquiterpene-like compounds.

Through the combination of natural products chemistry and diversity-oriented synthesis, a new approach, diversity-enhanced extracts, for increasing the diversity of natural product-like compounds is proposed. They are prepared from chemical reactions that remodel molecular scaffolds directly on extracts of natural resources. This method was applied to terpenes extracted from Curcuma zedoaria. Epoxidation and subsequent ring-opening reactions of epoxides were used to modify molecular skeletons. As a result, seven sesquiterpene-like compounds with some containing new molecular skeletons were obtained.