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Bioactive hydrogenated azaphilones from acid-tolerant fungus Penicillium purpureum OUCMDZ-019

Abstract

Two new hydrogenated azaphilones (1 and 2), together with the known azaphilone (3) were isolated from the red soil-derived acid-tolerant fungus Penicillium purpureum OUCMDZ-019 by OSMAC (one strain many compounds) strategy. Their structures were determined by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy analysis and electronic circular dichroism (ECD) calculations. Compound 1 was the first reported azaphilone that salified with pyridine and chlorination occurred at C-1, and it exhibited potential inhibitory activity on melanin production as tyrosinase inhibitor in vivo. Furthermore, (+)-mitorubrinol acetate (3) showed significantly inhibitory activity against H1N1 with IC50 values of 58.6 μM (ribavirin, IC50 85.0 μM) as the first report.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 82373748, 81973198, 82111540166, and U1906213).

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Correspondence to Weiming Zhu or Yi Wang.

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Hou, C., Wang, Y., Meng, X. et al. Bioactive hydrogenated azaphilones from acid-tolerant fungus Penicillium purpureum OUCMDZ-019. J Antibiot 78, 281–287 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-025-00818-7

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