Australia is home to eleven species of stingless bees which incorporate plant resins and beeswax to produce propolis for nest construction, predator deterrence, and protection against microbial pathogens. Stingless bee propolis has a long history of use in traditional medicine across tropical regions including Mexico, Brazil, India, and Southeast Asia, where it has been employed to promote human health and treat infectious diseases. To date, chemical and biological studies of stingless bee propolis have focused predominantly on South American and Southeast Asian species, leaving the chemical diversity and therapeutic potential of Australian stingless bee propolis largely unexplored.
Hypertrophic scarring is characterised by excessive fibroblast proliferation, myofibroblast differentiation, aberrant extracellular matrix deposition, and impaired apoptosis. Current anti-scar therapies suffer from limited efficacy, recurrence, tissue damage, and patient discomfort, highlighting the need for improved therapeutic strategies. From the propolis of the Australian stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria, a bioactive meroterpenoid, tomentosenol A, was identified. Using adult human dermal fibroblasts stimulated with transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) across a series of biological assays, tomentosenol A was shown to suppress TGF-β1/SMAD3 signalling, leading to the downregulation of profibrotic gene transcription and protein expression.
This presentation will describe the total synthesis of tomentosenol A and its biological evaluation, providing mechanistic insight into its anti-scarring activity. Together, these findings position tomentosenol A as a promising lead compound for the development of novel therapeutics to manage hypertrophic scars caused by deep dermal injuries that are associated with surgery, trauma, and burns.