Narcissus and Daffodil

9 Studies on galanthamine extraction
from Narcissus and other
Amaryllidaceae
Mirko Kreh
INTRODUCTION
When in 1947 Proskurnina and Yakovleva isolated a novel alkaloid, which they
named galanthamine, from Galanthus woronowii (Caucasian snowdrop), they could
not have foreseen the relevance of their findings for the pharmaceutical industry.
Success in the treatment of poliomyelitis with galanthamine was soon reported,
and the alkaloid became a routine part of the Soviet stock of medicines. As early as
1960, it was reported that galanthamine was an inhibitor of acetylcholinesterase,
similar to the natural product physostigmine and the synthetic product neostigmine
(Schulz, 1960).
Medicinal and pharmacological tests led to a huge number of potential uses for
galanthamine. Among the variety of indications cited in the literature (ABDA,
1993) are described analgesic effects comparable with morphine (Cozanitis and
Rosenberg, 1983), compensation of the effect of opiates on respiration (Paskov
et al., 1963), effects on alcohol abuse (Opitz, 1991) and effects in treating Alzheimer’s
disease (Han et al., 1991).
Until the 1960s, galanthamine was isolated from natural supplies of snowdrop,
Galanthus nivalis (Chimiko-Pharmazevtitschen Zavod, 1959), but commercial
production from Ungernia species was also described (Cherkasov et al., 1986).
Nowadays, galanthamine is also isolated from Leucojum aestivum (summer snowflake)
(Gorinova et al., 1993), although a number of promising chemical syntheses have
been reported (Czollner et al., 1998).
The promising pharmacological properties of galanthamine, and the shrinking
natural sources of the species mentioned, made it of interest to find new sources of
galanthamine within the Amaryllidaceae family. The research reported here is
based on a doctoral thesis presented to Marburg University (Kreh, 1995).
SELECTION AND SCREENING OF PLANT MATERIAL
The search for galanthamine was restricted to the Amaryllidaceae, because this
family has a very specific alkaloid metabolism. In the literature data concerning
galanthamine and the alkaloid content of species of Amaryllidaceae are found in
many publications (e.g., Fuganti, 1975; Cherkasov, 1977; Cherkasov et al., 1984,
1986, 1988, 1989; Tanahashi et al., 1990). The concentrations reported for assay
often differ for the same species. From the literature it was not possible to decide