H1-A, a compound isolated from Fusarium oxysporum inhibits hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3 serine protease

The present study was aimed to isolate the active compounds from the fermentation products of Fusarium oxysporum, which had hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3 protease inhibitory activity. A bioactive compound was isolated by reverse-phase silica-gel column chromatography, silica-gel column chromatography, semi-preparative reverse-phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), and then its molecular structure was elucidated based on the spectrosopic analysis. As a result, the compound (H1-A, 1) Ergosta-5, 8 (14), 22-trien-7-one, 3-hydroxy-,(3β, 22E) was isolated and identified. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first report on the isolation of H1-A from microorganisms with the inhibitory activity of NS3 protease.