Synthesis and Evaluation of Artemisinin-Based Hybrid and Dimer Derivatives as Antimelanoma Agents

Lorenzo Botta; Silvia Filippi; Bruno M Bizzarri; Claudio Zippilli; Roberta Meschini; Rebecca Pogni; Maria Camilla Baratto; Luciano Villanova; Raffaele Saladino

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b02600

Synthesis and Evaluation of Artemisinin-Based Hybrid and Dimer Derivatives as Antimelanoma Agents

ACS Omega. 2019 Dec 27;5(1):243-251. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02600. eCollection 2020 Jan 14.

Authors

Lorenzo Botta¹, Silvia Filippi¹, Bruno M Bizzarri¹, Claudio Zippilli¹, Roberta Meschini¹, Rebecca Pogni², Maria Camilla Baratto², Luciano Villanova³, Raffaele Saladino¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, via S. C. De Lellis 44, 01100, Viterbo, Italy.
² Department of Biotechnology, Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Siena, via Aldo Moro 2, 53100 Siena, Italy.
³ Lachifarma s.r.l., S.S.16 Zona Industriale, 73010, Zollino, Lecce, Italy.

Abstract

A library of hybrid and dimer compounds based on the natural scaffold of artemisinin was synthesized. These derivatives were obtained by coupling of artemisinin derivatives, artesunate, and dihydroartemisinin with a panel of phytochemical compounds. The novel artemisinin-based hybrids and dimers were evaluated for their anticancer activity on a cervical cancer cell line (HeLa) and on three complementary metastatic melanoma cancer cell lines (SK-MEL3, SK-MEL24, and RPMI-7951). Two hybrid compounds obtained by coupling of artesunate with eugenol and tyrosol, and one of the dimer compounds containing curcumin, emerged as the most active and cancer-selective derivatives.