Tatiane Cruz de Carvalho, Antônio Eduardo Miller Crotti, Eduardo José Crevelin, Luiz Alberto Beraldo de Moraes and Niege Araçari Jacometti Cardoso Furtado
School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirão Preto, University os São Paulo, Brazil
Oleoresins from Copaifera species are widely used in Brazilian folk medicine and chemical and biological investigations have proved that diterpenes are among the bioactive compounds from this raw material. The human gut is the natural habitat of a large, diverse population and dynamics of microorganisms, mainly anaerobic bacteria. The metabolic reactions performed by these bacteria and their respective enzymes have the ability to metabolize drugs and other xenobiotics. An important factor in the evaluation of the safety and efficacy of any drug is the knowledge about its metabolism, which can be investigated through biotransformation studies using bacteria from the gastrointestinal tract. The purpose of this study was to develop biotransformation processes of the bioactive diterpene 3β-acetoxycopalic acid isolated from Copaifera langsdorffii using gastrointestinal bacteria. The biotransformation experiments were performed for 24 hours and ethyl acetate extracts obtained from the cultures were analyzed by LC-MS and LC-MS/MS using a Waters ACQUITY UPLC H-Class system coupled to the Xevo® TQ-S tandem quadrupole (Waters Corporation, Milford, MA, USA) mass spectrometer with a Z-spray source operating in the negative mode. Experiments were also carried out with control flasks. The gastrointestinal bacteria Bifidobacterium sp, B. longum, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Escherichia coli were capable of producing 3β-hydroxycopalic acid from 3β-acetoxycopalic acid.
Keywords: Biotransformation. Gastrointestinal bacteria, Copaifera langsdorffii.