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Background: Antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat against humankind and the search for new therapeutics is needed. This study aims to investigate the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of ethanol extracts and compounds isolated from Dissotis senegambiensis and Amphiblemma monticola, two Cameroonian Melastomataceae species traditionally used for the treatment of fever, malaria and infectious diseases., Methods: The plant extracts were prepared by maceration in ethanol. Standard chromatographic and spectroscopic methods were used to isolate and identify fourteen compounds from the two plant species [1-6 (from D. senegambiensis), 3, 4 and 7-14 (from A. monticola)]. A two-fold serial micro-dilution method was used to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) against four bacterial strains including two resistant bacterial strains, methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA3) and methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA4) and three yeast strains., Results: The fractionation of EtOH extracts afforded fourteen compounds belonging to triterpenoid and phenolic derivatives. The ethanol extracts, compounds 3, 5-8, 10 and the mixture of 10 + 12 were active against all the tested bacterial and fungal species. Compound 7 (MIC = 16-32 μg/mL) and 10 (MIC = 8-16 μg/mL) displayed the largest antibacterial and antifungal activities, respectively. Compounds 7, 10 and the mixture of 10 + 12 showed prominent antibacterial activity against methicillin- resistant S. aureus (MRSA) which is in some cases equal to that of ciprofloxacin used as reference antibacterial drug. Compound 8 also showed high radical-scavenging activities and ferric reducing power when compared with vitamin C and butylated hydroxytoluene used as reference antioxidants. The tested samples were non-toxic to normal cells highlighting their good selectivity., Conclusions: The result of this investigation reveals the potential of D. senegambiensis and A. monticola as well as the most active compounds in the search for new antimicrobial and antioxidant agents. So, further investigations are needed.

The phytochemical study of the MeOH extract from the fruits of Ardisia kivuensis was carried out using repeated silica gel column chromatography followed by Sephadex LH-20 to afford a new alkenylmethylresorcinol, ardisinol III (1) along with three known compounds, oleanolic acid, β-sitosterol and pentacosanoic acid. The structure of 1 was elucidated using spectroscopic analysis (NMR and MS), and comparison with published data. Compound 1 had weak antioxidant activity (IC50 109.8 μg/mL) while other compounds were not active as compared to L-ascorbic acid (IC50 3.9 μg/mL).