Chemistry of silybin

Silybin, a secondary metabolite isolated from the seeds of the blessed milk thistle (Silybum marianum) was discovered as the first member of a new family of natural compounds called flavonolignans in 1959. Over the years it has received the research attention of many organic chemists. This research has resulted in a number of semisynthetic derivatives prepared in an effort to modulate and better target the biological activities of silybin or to improve its physical properties, such as its solubility. A fundamental breakthrough in silybin chemistry was the determination of the absolute configurations of silybin A and silybin B, and the development of methods for their separation. This review covers articles dealing with silybin chemistry and also summarizes all the derivatives prepared.

Synthesis and antiangiogenic activity of new silybin galloyl esters

The synthesis of various silybin monogalloyl esters was developed, and their antiangiogenic activities were evaluated in a variety of in vitro tests with human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs). A structure-activity relationship (SAR) study found the regioselectivity of the silybin galloylation to be highly significant. Silybin (as an equimolar mixture of two diastereomers A and B) exhibited quite poor antiangiogenic activities, whereas its B stereoisomer is more active than silybin A. The galloylation of phenolic OH groups of natural silybin (a mixture of both isomers) leads to increases in their antiangiogenic activities, which is more apparent with the 7-OH than the 20-OH. In contrast, gallates at aliphatic OH groups either had a comparable activity to the parent compound or are even worse than silybin, which was observed in the case of 3-O-galloylsilybin. The most effective compound from this series (7-O-galloylsilybin) has also been prepared from stereochemically pure silybins A and B to evaluate the effect of stereochemistry on the activity. As with silybin itself, the B isomer of 7-O-galloylsilybin was more active than the A isomer.