Lignans from the Twigs of and Their Bioactivities.

, an important medicinal plant, is widely used as a traditional Chinese medicine and spice. Using cytotoxicity-guided fractionation, nine new lignans ⁻ and ten known analogues ⁻ were obtained from the EtOH extract of the twigs of . Their structures were assigned by extensive 1D- and 2D-NMR experiments, and the absolute configurations were resolved by specific rotation and a combination of experimental and theoretically calculated electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra. In the cytotoxicity assay, 7',9-epoxylignans with feruloyl or cinnamoyl groups (compounds ⁻, and ) were selectively cytotoxic against NCI-H1650 cell line, while the dibenzylbutyrolactone lignans ⁻ exerted cytotoxicities against HCT-116 and A2780 cell lines. The results highlighted the structure-activity relationship importance of a feruloyl or a cinnamoyl moiety at C-9' or/and C-7 ketone in 7',9-epoxylignans. Furthermore, compound was moderate active toward protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) with an IC value of 13.5 μM, and compounds ⁻, and displayed inhibitory activity against LPS-induced NO production in RAW264.7 macrophages, with IC values of 46.8, 50.1, 58.6, 47.5, and 66.5 μM, respectively.