Aerial parts of C. asiatica were collected in September 2003, in Hebei province, P.R. China. A
voucher specimen, identified by Dr. Wen-Yuan Gao, was deposited under registration No. TJU-03928
at the herbarium of the Department of Natural Products and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin
University. The plant material (3 kg) was refluxed three times with 95% EtOH. The extract was
concentrated under reduced pressure to give a residue (700 g) which was partitioned between ethyl
acetate and H2O. The EtOAc extract (160 g) was chromatographed on a silica gel column with an
eluent of increasing polarity and eluates of similar composition, according to TLC analysis, were
pooled to yield 19 fractions. Fraction 16 (7.7 g, Rf = 0.5, eluted with 9:1 CHCl3-MeOH) was
chromatographed on Toyopearl HW-40, and then further purified by reverse phase HPLC (8:2 MeOHH2O)
and GPC (MeOH) to give compound 1 (6 mg).