A first new antimalarial pregnane glycoside from Gongronema napalense.

As a part of the UIC-based ICBG project in Laos, plants were collected based on ethnomedical interviews and evaluated for antimalarial activity. A CHCl3 extract from the vine of Gongronema napalense (Wall.) Decne. (Asclepiadaceae) showed promising anti-malarial activity while exhibiting low levels of cytotoxicity and was thus followed up with further fractionation and biological evaluation. Bioassay-guided fractionation led to the isolation of a new steroidal glycoside, gongroneside A, which showed antimalarial activity in vitro with an IC50 value of 1.60 and 1.39 µM against the Plasmodium falciparum D6 and W2 clones, respectively.