Antileishmanial compounds isolated from Psidium guajava L. using a metabolomic approach

<p>With an estimated annual incidence of 1 million cases, leishmaniasis is one of the top five vector-borne diseases. Currently available treatments involve side effects, including toxicity, non-specific targeting, and resistance development. Thus, new antileishmanial chemical entities are of the utmost interest to fight against this disease. The aim of this study was to obtain potential antileishmanial natural products from <em>Psidium guajava</em> leaves using a metabolomic workflow. Several crude extracts from <em>P. guajava</em> leaves harvested from different locations Lao People&rsquo;s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) were profiled by liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry and evaluated for their antileishmanial activities. The putative active compounds were highlighted by multivariate correlation analysis between the antileishmanial response and chromatographic profiles of <em>P. guajava</em> mixtures. The results showed that the pooled apolar fractions from <em>P. guajava</em> were the most active (IC₅₀ = 1.96&plusmn;0.47 &micro;g/mL). Multivariate data analysis of the apolar fractions highlighted a family of triterpenoid compounds, including jacoumaric acid (IC₅₀ = 1.318&plusmn;0.59 &micro;g/mL) and corosolic acid (IC₅₀ = 1.01&plusmn;0.06 &micro;g/mL). Our approach allowed the identification of antileishmanial compounds from the crude extracts in only a small number of steps steps and can be easily adapted for use in the discovery workflows of several other natural products.</p>