Straightforward synthesis, characterization, and cytotoxicity evaluation of hybrids of natural alkaloid evodiamine/rutaecarpine and thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidinones

Experimental and computational study on anti-gastric cancer activity and mechanism of evodiamine derivatives

Introduction: Human topoisomerase 1 (TOP1) is an important target of various anticancer compounds. The design and discovery of inhibitors targeting TOP1 are of great significance for the development of anticancer drugs. Evodiamine and thieno [2,3-d] pyridine hybrids show potential antitumor activity. Herein, the anti-gastric cancer activities of these hybrids were investigated. Methods: The inhibitory effects of different concentrations of ten evodiamine derivatives on the gastric cancer cell line SGC-7901 were assessed using a methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium assay. Compounds EVO-1 and EVO-6 strongly inhibited gastric cancer cell proliferation, with inhibition rates of 81.17% ± 5.08% and 80.92% ± 2.75%, respectively. To discover the relationship between the structure and activity of these two derivatives, density functional theory was used to investigate their optimized geometries, natural population charges, frontier molecular orbitals, and molecular electrostatic potentials. To clarify their anti-gastric cancer mechanisms, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulations, and binding free energy calculations were performed against TOP1. Results: The results demonstrated that these compounds could intercalate into the cleaved DNA-binding site to form a TOP1-DNA-ligand ternary complex, and the ligand remained secure at the cleaved DNA-binding site to form a stable ternary complex. As the binding free energy of compound EVO-1 with TOP1 (-38.33 kcal·mol-1) was lower than that of compound EVO-6 (-33.25 kcal·mol-1), compound EVO-1 could be a more potent anti-gastric cancer agent than compound EVO-6. Discussion: Thus, compound EVO-1 could be a promising anti-gastric cancer drug candidate. This study may facilitate the design and development of novel TOP1 inhibitors.

Natural product evodiamine-inspired medicinal chemistry: Anticancer activity, structural optimization and structure-activity relationship

It is a well-known phenomenon that natural products can serve as powerful drug leads to generate new molecular entities with novel therapeutic utility. Evodiamine (Evo), a major alkaloid component in traditional Chinese medicine Evodiae Fructus, is considered a desirable lead scaffold as its multifunctional pharmacological properties. Although natural Evo has suboptimal biological activity, poor pharmacokinetics, low water solubility, and chemical instability, medicinal chemists have succeeded in producing synthetic analogs that overshadow the deficiency of Evo in terms of further clinical application. Recently, several reviews on the synthesis, structural modification, mechanism pharmacological actions, structure-activity relationship (SAR) of Evo have been published, while few reviews that incorporates intensive structural basis and extensive SAR are reported. The purpose of this article is to review the structural basis, anti-cancer activities, and mechanisms of Evo and its derivatives. Emphasis will be placed on the optimizing strategies to improve the anticancer activities, such as structural modifications, pharmacophore combination and drug delivery systems. The current review would benefit further structural modifications of Evo to discover novel anticancer drugs.

Design, synthesis and bioactivity evaluation of favorable evodiamine derivative scaffold for developing cancer therapy

Natural product evodiamine is one of the most privileged scaffolds in drug discovery and is suitable for derivatization, which can be conducted quickly for structure optimization and structure-activity relationship research. In this work, a comprehensive SAR study on evodiamine scaffold with N14-3'-fluorophenyl substituted was completed, and compounds with high anti-tumor activity and good inhibitory effect on Top1 and Top2 were screened out. Tested evodiamine derivatives exhibited excellent broad-spectrum anti-tumor activity. Among them, compound 8b revealed 55.15% and 55.50% inhibition for Top1 and Top2 at 25 μM, as well as 0.16 and 0.13 μM IC₅₀ value for MGC-803 and SGC-7901 cells, respectively; compound 9a revealed 70.50% and 71.81% inhibition for Top1 and Top2 at 25 μM, as well as 0.22 and 0.27 μM IC₅₀ value for MGC-803 and SGC-7901 cells, respectively. The further biological evaluation showed that they could functionally induce apoptosis, significantly arrest the cell cycle at the G2/M phase, and markedly inhibit cell proliferation, migration and invasion. In addition, compound 9a performed a tumor inhibitory rate of 36.35% and showed no apparent toxicity in vivo. Overall, these optimized protocols will advance the progression of cancer chemotherapy and can be used to expand the options for screening therapeutic cancer drugs.

Synthesis and Antitumor Activity of Evodiamine Derivatives With Nitro, Amino, and Methoxy Groups

MS, and IR, 1H NMR and 13C NMR spectroscopy were employed to elucidate 4 novel evodiamine (EVO) derivatives with nitro, amino, and methoxy groups, namely 2-NO2-EVO (7a), 10-OCH3-2-NO2-EVO (7b), 2-NH2-EVO (8a), and 10-OCH3-2-NH2-EVO (8b). The amino compounds (8a, 8b) were obtained by the reduction of nitro derivatives (7a, 7b) with SnCl2/HCl. The antiproliferative activities of these compounds were tested by Cell Counting Kit-8 assay for 48 h against the MDA-MB-231 and sw620 cancer cell lines, as well as the normal LO2 cells. The in vitro experiment showed that 8a possesses the most potent inhibitory activities against MDA-MB-231 and SW620 cells, with IC50 values of 0.79 and 1.28 μM, respectively. The cytotoxicity of 8a against the 2 cancer cell lines was higher than that of EVO.

Design, synthesis and bioactivity evaluation of novel N-phenyl-substituted evodiamine derivatives as potent anti-tumor agents

Natural products are important sources for the development of therapeutic medicine, among which evodia fruit has a wide range of medicinal properties in traditional Chinese medicine. Evodiamine, the main active component of evodia fruit, has various anti-cancer effects and has been proved to be a Topo inhibitor. From our previous attempts of modifying evodiamine, we found that the N14 phenyl substituted derivatives had showed great anti-tumor activity, which prompted us to further explore the novel structures and activities of these compounds. Compound 6f, as a N14 3-fluorinated phenyl substituted evodiamine derivative, showed a certain inhibitory activity against Topo I at 200 μM. By studying its anti-tumor effects in vitro, compound 6f could inhibit proliferation and induce apoptosis, as well as arrest the cell cycle of HGC-27 and HT-29 cell lines at G2/M phase in a concentration-dependent manner. Moreover, compound 6f could inhibit the migration and invasion of HGC-27 cell lines. Meanwhile, compound 6f could induce apoptosis of HGC-27 cells by inhibiting PI3K/AKT pathway. Overall, this work demonstrated that the N14 phenyl-substituted evodiamine derivatives had a good inhibitory effect on tumor cells in vitro, providing a promising strategy for developing potential anticancer agents for the treatment of gastrointestinal tumors.

The Synthesis, Structural Modification and Mode of Anticancer Action of Evodiamine: a review

BACKGROUND

Finding novel antitumor reagents from naturally occurring alkaloids is a widely accepted strategy. Evodiamine, a tryptamine indole alkaloid isolated from Evodia rutaecarpa, has a wide range of biological activities, such as antitumor, anti-inflammation, and anti-bacteria. Hence, research works on the structural modification of evodiamine will facilitate the discovery of new antitumor drugs.

OBJECTIVE

The recent advances in the synthesis of evodiamine, and studies on the drug design, biological activities, and structure-activity-relationships of its derivatives, published in patents and primary literatures, are reviewed in this paper.

METHODS

The literatures, including patents and follow-up research papers from 2015 to 2020, related to evodiamine is searched in the Scifinder, PubMed, Espacenet, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang databases. The key words are evodiamine, synthesis, modification, anticancer, mechanism.

RESULTS

The synthesis of evodiamine are summarized. Then, structural modifications of evodiamine are described, and the possible modes of actions are discussed.

CONCLUSION

Evodiamine has a 6/5/6/6/6 ring system, and the structural modifications are focused on ring A, D, E, C5, N-13, and N-14. Some compounds show promising anticancer potentials and warrant further study.

Design, synthesis and bioactivity evaluation of novel evodiamine derivatives with excellent potency against gastric cancer

Gastric cancer represents a significant health burden worldwide. Previously, inspired by the traditional Chinese medicine Wu-Chu-Yu to treat the spleen and stomach system for thousands of years, we identified N14-phenyl substituted evodiamine derivatives as potential antitumor agents with favorable inhibition on Top1. Herein, structural optimization and structure-activity relationship studies (SARs) led us to discovering a highly active evodiamine derivative compound 6t against gastric cancer. Further anti-tumor mechanism studies revealed that compound 6t played as the inhibition of topoisomerase 1 (Top1), effectively induced apoptosis, obviously arrested the cell cycle at the G2/M phase, and significantly inhibited the migration and invasion of SGC-7901 and MGC-803 cell lines in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, the compound 6t was low toxicity in vivo and exhibited excellent anti-tumor activity (TGI = 70.12%) in the MGC-803 xenograft models. In summary, compound 6t represents a promising candidate as a potential chemotherapeutic agent against gastric cancer.

Visible-Light-Mediated Synthesis of Rutaecarpine Alkaloids through C–N Cross-Coupling Reaction

A visible-light-initiated cross-dehydrogenative-coupling amination is described, featuring metal- and photocatalyst-free, at room temperature, and using air as an oxidant. The reaction provides a facile approach for the synthesis of rutaecarpine and its derivatives. The substrates with electron-withdrawing groups give higher yields than those with electron-donating groups, but the substituent position has a negligible influence on the yield. Using binaphthyl-diyl hydrogen phosphate and dibenzyl phosphate as catalysts both deliver satisfying yields. This straightforward light-driven strategy might be applicable to the synthesis of quinazolinone derivatives.

Recent Developments on the Synthesis and Biological Activities of Fused Pyrimidinone Derivatives

Heterocyclic compounds constitute a unique class of organic compounds endowed with a wide range of synthetic and pharmaceutical applications. Pyrimidinones and their fused analogues have received focused attention in this regard, partly due to their mimicry of nucleobases which consequently forges their interesting medicinal properties. Over the years, the medicinal chemistry research community has experienced an upsurge in articles describing the exploration of these scaffolds to develop effective therapeutic agents. Several biological activities, including antimicrobial, antiviral, anticancer, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anticonvulsive, and antihistaminic, have been well documented. This minireview presents a compendium of recent developments (2017-2020) focused on the synthesis and biological activities of fused pyrimidinones. The goal is to update medicinal chemists on the therapeutic relevance of fused pyrimidinones and the molecular architecture of clinic-worthy drug candidates. A brief account of the structure-activity relationships (SAR) revealed from different biological assays is also discussed.

Synthesis, Antitumor Activity, Oil-Water Partition Coefficient, and Theoretical Calculation of 2 New Rutaecarpine Derivatives With Methoxy Groups

Two rutaecarpine (RUT) derivatives, substituted with methoxy groups, namely, 2-methoxyl rutaecarpine (RUT-OCH3, 3a), and 2,10-dimethoxy rutaecarpine (RUT-(OCH3)2, 3b), were synthesized and characterized using 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), 13C NMR and mass spectra. The in vitro antitumor activities of compounds RUT, 3a, and 3b against A549, H1299, and HepG2 cells were studied by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide assay. The results showed that the activity of compounds 3a and 3b was stronger than that of compound RUT, and the activity of compound 3a was stronger than that of 3b, indicating that the activity of the compounds was improved after structural modification. The apparent oil-water partition coefficients of compound RUT, 3a, and 3b were explored using ultraviolet spectrometry. The results indicated that hydrophobicity affects the physicochemical properties of the molecules and influences antitumor activities. In addition, the Natural Electron Configuration, frontier molecular orbital (highest occupied molecular orbital, lowest unoccupied molecular orbital) bandgaps of compounds have been studied based on density functional theory (DFT) by means of DFT-B3LYP/6‐31G (d) in Gaussian 16. The calculation results showed that bandgap of 3a is highest, indicating that the stability of 3a is weakest, so 3a has higher activity than RUT and 3b, which agrees with the results of antitumor activities experiment.