Доклади на Българската академия на науките Comptes rendus de l’Acad´ emie bulgare des Sciences Tome 67, No 3, 2014 CHIMIE Chimie bioorganique ALKALOIDS FROM PAPAVER DEGENII (URUM. ET JAV.) KUZMANOV Tsvetelina Doncheva, Nadezhda Kostova, Anelia Antonova, Alexander Tashev * , Stefan Philipov (Submitted by Academician E. Golovinsky on December 3, 2013 ) Abstract Phytochemical investigation of the alkaloid composition in Bulgarian en- demic species Papaver degenii was made for the first time. Fourteen alkaloids were isolated and determined. Two of them are simple tetrahydroisoquino- lines, three are benzylisoquinolines, four are protopines, three are isopavines, one is benzophenantridine and one is morphinane alkaloid. Their structures were established by physical and spectral analysis. Key words: Papaveraceae, Papaver degenii, alkaloids Introduction. Papaveraceae s. l. is represented by herbaceous plants, rarely by sub-shrubs or shrubs and very rarely by small trees. Its representatives are classified in 45 genera and 700 species, distributed in the temperate and sub- tropical zones mainly in the Northern hemisphere [ 1 ]. In Bulgaria the family is represented by 29 species belonging to seven genera. Genus Papaver includes eight species: Papaver apulum, P. dubium, P. hybridum, P. laevigatum, P. pinnat- ifidum, P. rhoeas, P. rumelicum and P. degenii. The latter is an alpine endemic plant localized in the Pirin Mountain [ 2, 3 ]. It is known that the species of the genus accumulate a large variety of isoquinoline and morphinane alkaloids [ 4 ]. The alkaloids are a rich source of biologically active products. Some of them, isolated from the plants of the Papaveraceae family, possess a wide scale of phar- macological activity and have extensive application in medical practice [ 5–7 ]. To the best of our knowledge no phytochemical investigations of P. degenii have been reported till now. The present paper deals with the isolation and structural eluci- dation of fourteen alkaloids of simple tetrahydroisoquinoline, benzylisoquinoline, protopine, isopavine, benzophenantridine and morphinane type. Materials and methods. General. IR: Bruker IFS113V, KBr. GC- MS: Hewlett Packard 6890/MSD5973 instrument, HP-5 MS column (30 m × 339