Drug Design, Development and Therapy (Aug 2014)

Design, synthesis, and anticancer activity of novel berberine derivatives prepared via CuAAC “click” chemistry as potential anticancer agents

  • Jin X,
  • Yan TH,
  • Yan L,
  • Li Q,
  • Wang RL,
  • Hu ZL,
  • Jiang YY,
  • Sun QY,
  • Cao YB

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2014, no. default
pp. 1047 – 1059

Abstract

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Xin Jin1,2,* Tian-Hua Yan,3,* Lan Yan,1 Qian Li,4 Rui-Lian Wang,1 Zhen-Lin Hu,1 Yuan-Ying Jiang,1 Qing-Yan Sun,1 Yong-Bing Cao1 1School of Pharmacy, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China; 2School of Pharmacy, FuJian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Fuzhou, People's Republic of China; 3Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China; 4Diakite Biological Technology Co., Ltd, Shanghai, People's Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: A series of novel derivatives of phenyl-substituted berberine triazolyls has been designed and synthesized via copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition click chemistry in an attempt to develop antitumor agents. All of the compounds were evaluated for anticancer activity against a panel of three human cancer cell lines, including MCF-7 (breast), SW-1990 (pancreatic), and SMMC-7721 (liver) and the noncancerous human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) cell lines. The results indicated that most of the compounds displayed notable anticancer activities against the MCF-7 cells compared with berberine. Among these derivatives, compound 16 showed the most potent inhibitory activity against the SW-1990 and SMMC-7721 cell lines, with half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values of 8.54±1.97 µM and 11.87±1.83 µM, respectively. Compound 36 exhibited the most potent inhibitory activity against the MCF-7 cell line, with an IC50 value of 12.57±1.96 µM. Compound 16 and compound 36 exhibited low cytotoxicity in the HUVEC cell line, with IC50 values of 25.49±3.24 µM and 30.47±3.47 µM. Furthermore, compounds 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 32, and 36 exhibited much better selectivity than berberine toward the normal cell line HUVEC. Keywords: berberine, anticancer, click chemistry, structure–activity relationship