As part of the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) Program, we were interested in identifying biologically active unfolded protein response (UPR) inducing compounds from marine microorganisms isolated from Costa Rican biota. With this aim in mind we have now generated more than 33,000 unique prefractionated natural product extracts from marine and terrestrial organisms that have been submitted to the Center of Chemical Genomics (CCG) at the University of Michigan for high throughput screening (HTS). An effective complementary cell-based assay to identify novel modulators of UPR signaling was used for screening extracts. Active fractions were iteratively subjected to reverse-phase HPLC chromatographic analysis, and together with lobophorin A, B, E, and F (1-4), three new lobophorin congeners, designated as CR1 (5), CR2 (6), and CR3 (7) were isolated. Herein, we report that secondary assays revealed that the new lobophorins induced UPR-associated gene expression, inhibited oral squamous cell carcinoma cell growth, and led to UPR-dependent cell death in murine embryonic fibroblast (MEF) cells.
Keywords: ATF4; CHOP; ER stress; UPR; anticancer; lobophorin; natural products; oral cancer; oral squamous cell carcinoma.