Background: For the last two decades, diterpenoid isosteviol and its derivatives have gained significant attention for novel chemical transformation in the drug discovery field.
Results: An efficient way towards the synthesis of structurally diverse isosteviol derivatives was described here employing unsaturated functionalities as attractive templates for further transformation such as epoxidation. These structurally diverse compounds exhibited promising cytotoxic activities on different types of cancer cell lines, leading to drug discovery derived from natural products for the treatment of cancer.
Conclusion: In this work, novel isosteviol derivatives with Michael acceptors were synthesized to expand the diversity and complexity of a class of isosteviol-derived triazole conjugates to facilitate the development of potential antitumor agents.