Volume 40, Issue 14 pp. 1662-1666
Concise Report

Protecting-Group-Free One-Step Palladium-Catalyzed Coupling on C25 of Cucurbitacin B Expands Chemical Diversity with Improved Cytotoxicity against A549 Cells

Ning Zhuo

Ning Zhuo

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049 China

State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203 China

Search for more papers by this author
Jie Ma

Jie Ma

State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203 China

Search for more papers by this author
Lei Cao

Lei Cao

State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203 China

School of Chinese Materia Medica, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210046 China

Search for more papers by this author
Linhai Chen

Linhai Chen

State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203 China

Search for more papers by this author
Fajun Nan

Corresponding Author

Fajun Nan

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing, 100049 China

State Key Laboratory of Drug Research, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201203 China

Drug Discovery Shandong Laboratory, Bohai Rim Advanced Research Institute for Drug Discovery, Yantai, Shandong, 264117 China

E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
First published: 16 April 2022

Comprehensive Summary

The natural product cucurbitacin B has been widely studied because of its multiple biological activities, especially its potent antitumor effects. However, modifications of cucurbitacin B are mainly focused on the C2 and C16 site, studies on the C25 acetoxy group are still limited. We successfully developed a palladium-catalyzed allylic coupling of cucurbitacin B with boronic acids, providing a one-step approach to expand the chemical diversity of the C25 position. Our method was protecting-group-free, showing a good functional group tolerance and a wide substrate scope under mild reaction conditions. A library of 29 derivatives was prepared, compounds 2q and 2u showed higher cytotoxicity against A549 cells than cucurbitacin B, compounds 2n and 2o maintained potency, and the introduced hydroxyl and amino groups could be further derived.image

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.