Facile and Divergent Synthesis of Lamellarins and Lactam-Containing Derivatives with Improved Drug Likeness and Biological Activities

Abstract

With the goal to improve the aqueous solubility of lamellarins, the lactone ring in their skeleton was replaced with a lactam moiety in azalamellarins. However, the reported synthetic route produced such derivatives in very low yields. Hence, this study focused on developing an efficient simplified total synthetic scheme that could furnish both azalamellarins and the parent lamellarins from the same pyrrole ester intermediates. Subsequent comparative profiling revealed that the introduced lactone-to-lactam replacement rendered these molecules less lipophilic, whereas their cancer cytotoxicity remained equipotent to that of the parent compounds. Interestingly, their inhibitory activity was significantly enhanced towards the multifaceted GSK-3β enzyme. Our results clearly demonstrate the therapeutic potential of this promising class of marine-derived natural products and justify their further development, especially into anticancer agents.

Keywords: cytotoxicity; drug likeness; inhibitors; lamellarins; total synthesis.