Abstract: Alkaloids are natural organic compounds that were the most early studied by scientists and most of them have good bioactivities. Plants of the genus Daphniphyllum are known to metabolize structurally diversified Daphniphyllum alkaloids with highly complex polycyclic skeleton. Daphniphyllum alkaloids have been the challenging subjects in biogenetic and synthetic programs of natural products. Some of these alkaloids exhibited cytotoxic activities against several tumor cell lines. Along with the developments of isolation and structure elucidation techniques of phytochemistry,more and more compounds of this genus were isolated and identified. More than 70 compounds were obtained from this genus of plants in recent research.In order to assist the medicinal application of this genus of plants,progresses made in this field were systemically reviewed, which will be benefitial for further research and development of these compounds.

Key words: Daphniphyllum, chemical constituents, alkaloids