Novel artemisinin derivatives with potent anticancer activities and the anti-colorectal cancer effect by the mitochondria-mediated pathway

Many artemisinin derivatives have good inhibitory effects on malignant tumors. In this work, a novel series of artemisinin derivatives containing piperazine and fluorine groups were designed and synthesized and their structures were confirmed by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR and HRMS technologies. The in vitro cytotoxicity against various cancer cell lines was evaluated. Among the derivatives, compound 12h was found to exhibit not only the best activity against HCT-116 cells (IC₅₀ = 0.12 ± 0.05 μM), but also low toxicity against normal cell line L02 (IC₅₀ = 12.46 ± 0.10 μM). The mechanisms study revealed that compound 12h caused the cell cycle arrest in G1 phase, induced apoptosis in a concentration-dependent manner, significantly reduced mitochondrial membrane potential, increased intracellular ROS and Ca²⁺ levels, up-regulated the expression of Bax, cleaved caspase-9, cleaved caspase-3, and down-regulated the expression of Bcl-2 protein. A series of analyses confirmed that 12h can inhibit HCT-116 cells migration and induce apoptosis by a mechanism of the mitochondria-mediated pathway in the HCT-116 cell line. The present work indicates that compound 12h may merit further investigation as a potential therapeutic agent for colorectal cancer.