Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel benzo[b]xanthone derivatives as potential antitumor agents

Abstract

Nine novel aminoalkoxy substituted benzoxanthones (3a-3i) were synthesized. Their antitumor activities were evaluated in five human solid tumor cell lines including Hep-G2, BEL-7402, HeLa, MGC-803 and CNE by MTT method. The results showed that most of the compounds displayed moderate to good inhibitory activities on the tested cancer cell lines in vitro, among them compounds 3a and 3h showed higher antitumor activity than other tested compounds against most cell lines. The influence of two kinds of structural factors including the terminal amino group and length of carbon spacers on the anticancer activities were explored to discuss the preliminary structure-activity relationships.

Keywords

• xanthone
• benzoxanthone
• in vitro anticancer activity