Trapa bispinosa Roxb. is a traditional Chinese food which is well known for its medicinal properties. The shell of Trapa bispinosa has anticancer activity, maybe due to its high content of polyphenols. There are few studies on the chemical composition of Trapa bispinosa shells, then we isolated the active components from Trapa bispinosa shell and clarified the mechanism of its anticancer activity. One monomer compound was separated from the ethanol extract of the Trapa bispinosa shell by fractional extraction, silica gel, Sephadex LH-20 gel col...