Scaffold Diversity Inspired by the Natural Product Evodiamine: Discovery of Highly Potent and Multitargeting Antitumor Agents

J Med Chem. 2015 Aug 27;58(16):6678-96. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.5b00910. Epub 2015 Aug 19.

Abstract

A critical question in natural product-based drug discovery is how to translate the product into drug-like molecules with optimal pharmacological properties. The generation of natural product-inspired scaffold diversity is an effective but challenging strategy to investigate the broader chemical space and identify promising drug leads. Extending our efforts to the natural product evodiamine, a diverse library containing 11 evodiamine-inspired novel scaffolds and their derivatives were designed and synthesized. Most of them showed good to excellent antitumor activity against various human cancer cell lines. In particular, 3-chloro-10-hydroxyl thio-evodiamine (66c) showed excellent in vitro and in vivo antitumor efficacy with good tolerability and low toxicity. Antitumor mechanism and target profiling studies indicate that compound 66c is the first-in-class triple topoisomerase I/topoisomerase II/tubulin inhibitor. Overall, this study provided an effective strategy for natural product-based drug discovery.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic / chemical synthesis*
  • Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic / pharmacology*
  • Apoptosis / drug effects
  • Biological Products / chemistry
  • Cell Cycle / drug effects
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Drug Design
  • Drug Discovery
  • Drug Screening Assays, Antitumor
  • Evodia / chemistry*
  • Humans
  • Models, Molecular
  • Quinazolines / chemistry*
  • Quinazolines / pharmacology*
  • Structure-Activity Relationship
  • Topoisomerase I Inhibitors / chemical synthesis
  • Topoisomerase I Inhibitors / pharmacology
  • Topoisomerase II Inhibitors / chemical synthesis
  • Topoisomerase II Inhibitors / pharmacology
  • Tubulin Modulators / chemical synthesis
  • Tubulin Modulators / pharmacology

Substances

  • Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic
  • Biological Products
  • Quinazolines
  • Topoisomerase I Inhibitors
  • Topoisomerase II Inhibitors
  • Tubulin Modulators
  • evodiamine