Isolation of some organic substances from Crinum Lily plant: A promising topic for medical application

Lang Son City has 3/4 research topics of the school’s students won the first prize at the provincial level, notably the topic “Isolation of some organic substances from Crinum Lily plant and examination of the ability to inhibit AChE to support the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (brain disease affecting memory)”. Not only won the first prize at the provincial level, the topic when participating in the National Science and Technology contest for high school students was highly appreciated and won the third prize at the national level.

Instructing teacher (middle) and group of authors (photo provided by the author)

Realizing the role and significance of scientific research in educational activities in schools, over the years, teachers and students of Chu Van An High School for the Gifted have actively responded and promoted this activity. From the school year 2017-2018 until now, the school regularly has scientific research projects of students who won prizes at the Science and Technology Competition for high school students at the provincial and national levels. Prominent among them is the topic “Isolation of some organic substances from Crinum Lily plant and examination of AChE inhibition to support the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease”, by two students, Pham Nguyen Bao Ngoc (grade 11C2) and Vu Dinh Quynh Anh (grade 12E) (in the school year of 2022 – 2023). The project was conducted by Mrs. Nguyen Thu Thuy, a chemistry teacher, Chu Van An High School for the Gifted. When participating in the competition of science and technology organized for provincial high school students, the topic won the first prize. After that, the topic is selected by the organizers to participate in the national competition.

Student Pham Nguyen Bao Ngoc said: With a passion for scientific research, when the school launched the competion, we learned about the implementation of scientific and technical research topics of previous classmates. Through studying them, it is known that there are compounds in the plant that have good effects in supporting the treatment of diseases, however, in Vietnam, there has not been any research on the effects of compounds isolated from this plant. Therefore, we have chosen this topic to research and apply in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

To implement this topic, the research and experiment process, the authors have extracted and isolated compounds from Crinum Lily plant. Specifically, Crinum Lily plant after being harvested and cleaned, chopped, will be dried and finely ground to collect dry powder. This powder is extracted with methanol (which is an alcohol) and some other solvent. Then, to determine the structures of the isolated compounds, the group brought the extracted product to the Center for Research, Training and Technology Transfer – Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology to conduct distillation and recovery of the solvent to create a total concentrate matter,  from total concentrate matter continued to be extracted with other solvents, then examined on thin plate chromatography to choose a suitable solvent to run column chromatography to separate smaller fractions, the chromatographic steps were repeated several times until the pure substance was separated, from which to examine the ability to inhibit AChE of the isolated substances.

As a result, the team identified eight new compounds, which exhibited AChE inhibitory activity. Among them, there is a compound that exhibits good AChE inhibitory activity, which is superior to the control substance galantamine (Galantamine is a drug indicated in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease). This is a very positive signal of the application of substances isolated from Crinum Lily plant in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

As an instructor, Mrs. Nguyen Thu Thuy, a Chemistry teacher, Chu Van An High School for the Gifted said: From the ideas of the students, when assigned by the school’s management board to guide, in addition to professional knowledge, I guided students on how to conduct research on the topic, processes and steps to bring knowledge from theory to practice. So that to ensure the research topic meets the technical and methodological requirements when participating in science and technology competitions at all levels.

It is known that with the results achieved when implementing this topic, the group of authors was awarded a certificate of merit by the Chairman of the Provincial People’s Committee for outstanding achievements in scientific research (June 2023).

After winning the prize, the topic continued to be researched and perfected by the group of authors, whereby in the coming time, the group will continue to separate and refine compounds to find new compounds, contribute to the treatment of diseases…