The synthesis of symmetrical spermine conjugates using solid-phase chemistry

Influence of oral administration of kukoamine A on blood pressure in a rat hypertension model

The benefits of lowering blood pressure (BP) are well established for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. While there are a number of pharmaceuticals available for lowering BP, there is considerable interest in using dietary modifications, lifestyle and behaviour changes as alternative strategies. Kukoamines, caffeic acid derivatives of polyamines present in solanaceous plants, have been reported to reduce BP. We investigated the effect of orally administered synthetic kukoamine A on BP in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat (SHR) laboratory animal model of hypertension. Prior to the hypertension study, we determined the safety of the synthetic kukoamine A in a single oral dose (5 or 10 mg kg^-1 bodyweight) 14-day observational study in mice. No negative effects of the oral administration of kukoamine A were observed. We subsequently investigated the effect of daily oral doses of kukoamine A (0, 5, 10 mg kg^-1 bodyweight) for 35 days using the SHR rat model of hypertension. The normotensive control Wistar Kyoto (WKY) strain was used to provide a baseline for normal BP in rats. We observed no effect of orally administered synthetic kukoamine A on arterial hypertension in this laboratory animal model of hypertension.

Synthesis and Biological Activities of Naturally Functionalized Polyamines: An Overview

Recently, extensive researches have emphasized the fact that polyamine conjugates are becoming important in all biological and medicinal fields. In this review, we will focus our attention on natural polyamines and highlight recent progress in both fundamental mechanism studies and interests in the development and application for the therapeutic use of polyamine derivatives.

Recent applications of the Wittig reaction in alkaloid synthesis

The Wittig reaction is the chemical reaction of an aldehyde or ketone with a triphenyl phosphonium ylide (the Wittig reagent) to afford an alkene and triphenylphosphine oxide. Noteworthy, this reaction results in the synthesis of alkenes in a selective and predictable fashion. Thus, it became as one of the keystone of synthetic organic chemistry, especially in the total synthesis of natural products, where the selectivity of a reaction is paramount of importance. A literature survey disclosed the existence of vast numbers of related reports and comprehensive reviews on the applications of this important name reaction in the total synthesis of natural products. However, the aim of this chapter is to underscore, the applications of the Wittig reaction in the total synthesis of one the most important and prevalent classes of natural products, the alkaloids, especially those showing important and diverse biological activities.

Synthesis and high performance liquid chromatography/electrospray mass spectrometry single-bead decoding of split-pool structural libraries of polyamines supported on polystyrene and polystyrene/ethylene glycol resins

Natural polyamines are ubiquitous biomolecules present in all living cells. These cationic compounds play essential roles in both cell growth and differentiation and are known to interact in complex ways with polyanionic biomolecules. Consequently, there is significant interest in expanding nature's polyamine diversity using combinatorial synthesis and screening strategies. This article describes an efficient split-pool solid-phase synthetic strategy toward the generation of encoded libraries of polyamines via the exhaustive borane-promoted reduction of trityl-linked, resin-bound polyamides. Model structural libraries of tetra- and pentaamines were designed from a set of geometrically diverse amino acid building blocks. To encode the libraries, a partial termination synthesis approach was employed at the polyamide stage, allowing each library to be analyzed from single beads by HPLC/ESMS under two sets of conditions featuring both pH extremes. Determination of the sequence of polyamine residues was simply achieved by the mass differences observed between the full oligomers and the terminated ones. Both polystyrene- and TentaGel-supported libraries, including a library of 4913 pentaamines, were prepared and successfully decoded. For the TentaGel-supported libraries, suitable for on-bead aqueous screening of biomolecules, a novel trityl-derivatized resin was prepared in which the trityl group is anchored to the poly(ethylene glycol) chains via a methylene group. The resulting resin is much more resistant than other commercially available polystyrene-poly(ethylene glycol) trityl resins to the harsh borane reduction conditions required. Two workup conditions for the cleavage of the resultant borane-amine adducts were evaluated on the TentaGel bound polyamide 14. Although the two methods showed a comparable efficiency when using the polystyrene support, with 14 it was found that the piperidine-exchange method afforded polyamines of higher purity than the iodine-based oxidative method previously developed in our laboratory.

A Facile Synthesis of Selectively Protected Linear Oligoamines

A convenient multi-gram preparative method for the synthesis of linear oligoamines having the terminal primary amino groups unprotected and the central secondary amino functions protected with tert-butoxycarbonyl groups is presented. At the same time, simple one-pot preparation of the α,ω-bis(trifluoroacetamide) intermediates 2 has been developed. NMR spectra of the novel selectively protected oligoamines are also discussed.

Synthesis of natural-product-based compound libraries

Natural products cover a diversity space not yet available from synthetic libraries, with an unrivalled success rate as drug leads. The combinatorial synthesis of non-oligomeric natural-product-based libraries, however, is still limited to few examples because access to easily modified units strongly depends on the availability of a core structure either from a natural source, or through a suitable synthetic route. Only a few resourceful groups have managed the latter approach for more demanding multifunctional natural drug leads, such as epothilones.

Combinatorial chemistry: Polymer supported synthesis of peptide and non-peptide libraries

In recent years, combinatorial chemistry has emerged as a powerful tool for accelerating drug discovery. While industry is rapidly embracing the technology, researchers continue to develop novel library methods including resins, linkers, tagging and deconvolution techniques. Newer strategies involving computer-customized combinatorial libraries offer enormous potential for the design of more "focused" and "smart" chemical libraries with maximal diversity. In addition, miniaturized systems for synthesizing chemical libraries are also being developed, which has made it possible to carry out reactions at submicroliter volumes.