Efficient Access to the Iboga Skeleton: Optimized Procedure to Obtain Voacangine from Voacanga africana Root Bark.
ACS omega July 6, 2021 Bruno González, Catherine Fagúndez, Alejandro Peixoto de Abreu Lima et al. 18 citations
An optimized process extracts voacangine from Voacanga africana root bark using a direct acetone-based procedure, yielding approximately 0.8% of the dried root bark weight. The major alkaloids isolated are iboga-vobasinyl dimers, such as voacamine and voacamidine, which constitute about 3.7% of the bark. Because these dimers contain the voacangine moiety, a further optimized cleavage step produces additional voacangine at about 50% isolated molar yield. Applying both extraction and dimer cleavage nearly doubles the total voacangine obtained from the plant material compared to direct extraction alone.