icon Brucea antidysenterica J.F. Mill.
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Family Simaroubaceae
Description

Simaroubaceae plants are trees or shrubs usually containing bitter substances with simple hairs. It is a medium sized family (Stannard,, 1989) of about 25 genera and 120 species and distributed widely in the tropics and subtropics, the main centers of tropical America and tropical West Africa. Some genera of Simaroubaceae are Brucea J. F. Mill (1779), Harrisonia R. Br. ex A. Juss. (1825) and Kirkia Oliv. (1868). Brucea (1779) plants are shrubs of small trees, often not branched and have crowded leaves towards ends of branches. It has a genus of about 6 species occurring from tropical Africa, Asia and Australia. B. antidysenterica is shrub or small tree from 10 to 15 m high, with smooth bark of gray to pale brown color. The leaves are 10-64 cm long, the seed is 8-9 mm long and 5-6 mm wide. This plant is found in several African countries including Guinea, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Congo, Burundi, Sudan, Angola, Zambia and Malawi. Up land evergreen forest and forest margins are very suitable area for the plant. The bark, root bark and seeds are used in traditional medicine.
Image gallery
Brucea antidysenterica plant
Source: Photo by E. Dagne
Common names

Yedega Abalo or Waginos
Parts used

Bark, root bark and fruits
Major uses

Anti-cancer seed and bark

Country specific information available for Icontop IconCollapse
• Ethiopia

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Domestic consumption

No figures are available, though used extensively by experienced traditional healers.
Export

2,000 kg one time export only
Average price

1 $/kg
Plant material

Wild
Areas of production

The Ethiopian highlands 2000-3000 m.

Available sources of technologies Icontop IconCollapse

The plant is harvested from the wild and is not cultivated.

Scientific Information Icontop IconCollapse
Ethno-botanical info

The Scottish traveler James Bruce led an expedition to Ethiopia in 1769-72 and wrote in his memoirs an interesting account on B. antidysenterica. While traveling in Ethiopia, he suffered from fatal dysentery, which he was cured by a medicine that he was given by local healers which was mainly made up of this plant. He took the seeds of the plant, grew it in botanic garden in the U. K. where the genus was named after him "Brucea", and the other part of the binomial "antidysenterica" indicating its effect. The bark is used in traditional medicine to treat cancer.
Pharmacological studies

Based on the traditional empirical knowledge the National Cancer Institute of USA, attempted to look for anticancer compounds in the plant. Thus, several tons of the stem bark of the plant was collected from Ethiopia by R. E. Perdue of the US Department of Agriculture in 1971. Fractionation of the alcoholic extract guided by assay against KB and P-388 cells resulted in the isolation of the potent anti-leukaemic principle, bruceantin and several other related quassinoids (Kupchan et al., 1973; Kupchan et al., 1975).
Chemical constituents

The main types of compounds present in B. antidysenterica are a class of compounds known as quassinoids. These are bitter-tasting terpenoid compounds, which are characteristic of the Simaroubaceae family. Quassinoids such as bruceantin, display atineoplastic activity in the murine lymphocytic leukemia P-388 system (Kupchan et al., 1973).

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References Icontop IconCollapse
  • Fukamiya, N., Okano, M., Aratani, T., Negoro, K., McPhail, A. T., Ju-Ichi, M. and Lee, K.-H., 1986, Antitumor Agents, 79. Cytotoxic Antileukemic Alkaloids from Brucea antidysenterica. J. Nat. Prod., 49: 428-434
  • Fukamiya, N., Okano, M., Tagahara, K., Aratani, T., Muramoto, Y. and Lee, K.-H., 1987, Antitumor Agents, 90. Bruceantinoside C, a New Cytotoxic Quassinoid Glycoside from Brucea antidysenterica. J. Nat. Prod., 50: 1075-1079
  • Guene, M. and Pezzuto, J. M., 2004, Antitumor Activity of Bruceantin: An Old Drg with New Promise. J. Nat. Prod., 65(2): 269-272
  • Harris, A., Anderson, L. A., Phillipson, J. D. and Brown, R. T., 1985, Canthin-6-one Alkaloids from Brucea antidysenterica Root Bark. Planta Med., 51: 151-153
  • Kupchan, S. M., Britton, R. W., Lacadie, J. A., Ziegler, M. F. and Sigel, C. W., 1975, The Isolation and Structural Elucidation of Bruceantin and Bruceatinol, New Potent Antileukemic Quassinoids from Brucea antidysenterica. J. Org. Chem., 40: 648-654
  • Kupchan, S. M., Britton, R. W., Ziegler, M. F. and Sigel, C. W., 1973, Bruceantin, a New Potent Antileukemic Simaroubolide from Brucea antidysenterica. J. Org. Chem., 38: 178-179
  • Okano, M., Fukamiya, N., Aratani, T., Juichi, M. and Lee, K., 1985, Antitumor Agents, 74. Bruceanol-A and -B, Two New Antileukemic Quassinoids from Brucea antidysenterica. J. Nat. Prod., 48: 972-975
  • Okano, M., Lee, K.-H., Hall, I. H. and Boettner, F. E., 1981, Antitumor Agents. Bruceantinoside - A and -B Novel Antileukemic Quassinoid Glucosides from Brucea antidysenterica. J. Nat. Prod., 44: 470-474
  • Stannard, B., 1989, Simaroubaceae. In: Hedberg, I. and Edwards, S. (eds.), Flora of Ethiopia Pittosporaceae to Araliaceae Vol. 3, 437-441, National Herbarium. Addis Ababa