Kavita Sharma, Ph.D.

Summary: Our research program is primarily focused on extraction, isolation, purification and identification of bioactive compounds from different natural resources such as plants. The technique which we used for obtaining the bioactive compounds from plants are various chromatographic (GC/MS, HPLC, and TLC) and spectroscopic (NMR and mass) techniques.  Biological activities such as different cancer cell line and antimicrobial activities of crude as well as purified compounds is assayed as a joint venture with other research groups at ISU.

Minimum classes: Natural Product Chemistry

Projects: The easy availability of sagebrush has wide scope in the field of pharmaceutical, especially the sesquiterpene lactones (SLs). The presence of bioactive compounds, especially SLs, varies depending on climatic conditions and different regions of cultivation. It is very important to study the different genus of sagebrush because each genus has different sets of sesquiterpene lactones. This research is an exploratory study on the sesquiterpenes present in the leaves of Artemisia tridentate. The leaf foliage was extracted with 100 % chloroform. Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) analysis of the crude extract showed four bands. Each band was purified by column chromatography followed by recrystallization. Three sesquiterpenes lactones were isolated – leukodin, desacetylmatricarin, and matricarin. Of these, desacetylmatricarin was the major component. In addition a flavonoid, 3,6,7 -trimethylquercetagetin, was also isolated as a minor component. All these were characterized by TLC, High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), and extensive spectroscopic analysis, including 1D- and 2D-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), FTIR, and Mass Spectroscopy (MS). A number of SLs in cancer clinical trials have properties that enable them to target tumor and cancer stem cells while sparing normal ones.