Alkaloids and Anthraquinones from Malaysian Flora

The flora of Malaysia is one of the richest flora in the world due to the constantly warm and uniformly humid climate. Malaysia is listed as 12th most diverse nation (Abd Aziz, 2003) in the world and mainly covered by tropical rainsforests. Tropical rainforests cover only 12% of earth’s land area; however they constitute about 50% to 90% of world species. At least 25% of all modern drugs originate from rainforests even though only less than 1% of world’s tropical rainforest plant species have been evaluated for pharmacological properties (Kong, et al., 2003). The huge diversity of Malaysian flora with about 12 000 species of flowering plants offers huge chemical diversities for numerous biological targets. Malaysian flora is a rich source of numerous class of natural compounds such as alkaloids, anthraquinones and phenolic compounds. Plants are usually investigated based on their ethnobotanical use. The phytochemical study of several well-known plants in folklore medicine such as Eurycoma longifolia, Labisia pumila, Andrographis paniculata, Morinda citrifolia and Phyllanthus niruri yielded many bioactive phytochemicals. This review describes our work on the alkaloids of Fissistigma latifolium and Meiogyne virgata from family Annonaceae and anthraquinones of Renellia and Morinda from Rubiaceae family.