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The medicinal plant, Syzygium leucoxylon or commonly known as Obah found in North Borneo was considered as traditional medicine by local committee. Two new phenolics, leucoxenols A (1) and B (2) were isolated and identified as major secondary metabolites from the leaves of S. leucoxylon. Their chemical structures were elucidated based on spectroscopic data such as NMR and HRESIMS. Furthermore, these compounds were active against selected strains of fungi.

The medicinal herbs, Smilax bracteata C. Presl. (Smilacaceae) or commonly known as Tongkung in North Borneo Island was used traditionally for treatment of ailments in various Dusun villages in Sabah, Malaysia. One aromatic compound seselin (1) and two steroids β-sitosterol (2) as well as stigmasti-4-ene-3-one (3) were isolated and identified as major secondary metabolites from this plant. Their chemical structures were elucidated using 1H, 13C and 2D NMR. These chemical compounds have shown to possess variety of biological activities such as anticancer, anti-fungal and anti-inflammatory. Therefore, the ailments of local native Dusun people in Sabah, Malaysia were treated due to the presence of these compounds in S. bracteata.

Dye Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC) was first discovered in 1991 by O'regan and Gratzel. This new type of solar cell was reported to have lower production cost with efficiency as high as 12% which is comparable to conventional silicon solar cell. Initially, it uses ruthenium dye as light sensitizer for the operation. However, DSSC with ruthenium dyes are facing environment friendly issues due to the toxic chemicals and costly purification in processing ruthenium dye. Regardless of the poor performance in DSSC, natural dyes which are easy to prepare, cheap and environmental friendly still appear to be an alternative as dye sensitizer. In this study, dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated using anthocyanin source dyes extracted from several local fruits. All the extracts absorb a wide range of the visible light and ultraviolet spectrum. Therefore, all of the natural dyes show light absorption properties which is important for a dye sensitizer. A DSSC is comprised of conductive substrate, nanoporous semiconductor TiO2 layer, dye sensitizer, electrolyte with redox couple and a counter electrode with catalyst. In this study, the effect of different light source and different counter electrode are been investigated. However, it is vital to know that further research need to do more on the locally Borneo sourced dyes to evaluate and enhance their performance in Dye Sensitized Solar Cell.

Two new aromatic compounds, phillipsins A (1) and B (2) were isolated from the Bornean wild ginger Zingiber phillippsii Mood & Theilade, and were characterized based on spectroscopic data (HRESI-MS, FTIR as well as 1D and 2D NMR). These metabolites also exhibited strong antifungal activity against selected fungi.