Quinazolinecarboline alkaloid evodiamine as scaffold for targeting topoisomerase I and sirtuins

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.

Synthesis of pyrimidine-containing alkaloids

This review deals with the synthesis of naturally occurring alkaloids containing partially or completely saturated pyrimidine nuclei. The interest in these compounds is associated with their structural diversity, high biological activity and toxicity. The review is divided into four parts, each of which describes a number of synthetic methodologies toward structurally different naturally occurring alkaloids containing saturated cyclic six-membered amidine, guanidine, aminal and urea (thiourea) moieties, respectively. The development of various synthetic strategies for the preparation of these compounds has remarkably increased during the past few decades. This is primarily due to the fact that some of these compounds are isolated only in limited quantities, which makes it practically impossible to study their full structural characteristics and biological activity.

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.

Synthesis of ring opening of evodiamine derivatives and evaluation on their biological activity

As a main bioactive component extracted from Evodiae fructus, evodiamine has a variety of pharmacological activities. In this paper, evodiamine was chosen as starting material to react with different halides. Upon treatment of TFA, a series of novel ring-opening evodiamine derivatives 3a-o were successfully synthesized in a moderate to high yields. These obtained compounds exhibit a moderate to good antitumor activity against BGC803 and SW480 in vitro test by MTT assay. The results showed that hexyl substituted evodiamine derivative (3j, R=hexyl) has a strong antitumor activity against BGC803 and SW480.

A small library of chalcones induce liver cancer cell death through Akt phosphorylation inhibition

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ranks as the fifth most common and the second deadliest cancer worldwide. HCC is extremely resistant to the conventional chemotherapeutics. Hence, it is vital to develop new treatment options. Chalcones were previously shown to have anticancer activities in other cancer types. In this study, 11 chalcones along with quercetin, papaverin, catechin, Sorafenib and 5FU were analyzed for their bioactivities on 6 HCC cell lines and on dental pulp stem cells (DPSC) which differentiates into hepatocytes, and is used as a model for untransformed control cells. 3 of the chalcones (1, 9 and 11) were selected for further investigation due to their high cytotoxicity against liver cancer cells and compared to the other clinically established compounds. Chalcones did not show significant bioactivity (\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\hbox {IC}_{50}>20\upmu \hbox {M}$$\end{document}IC50>20μM) on dental pulp stem cells. Cell cycle analysis revealed that these 3 chalcone-molecules induced SubG1/G1 arrest. Akt protein phosphorylation was inhibited by these molecules in PTEN deficient, drug resistant, mesenchymal like Mahlavu cells leading to the activation of p21 and the inhibition of NF\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \kappa $$\end{document}κB-p65 transcription factor. Hence the chalcones induced apoptotic cell death pathway through NF\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ \kappa $$\end{document}κB-p65 inhibition. On the other hand, these molecules triggered p21 dependent activation of Rb protein and thereby inhibition of cell cycle and cell growth in liver cancer cells. Involvement of PI3K/Akt pathway hyperactivation was previously described in survival of liver cancer cells as carcinogenic event. Therefore, our results indicated that these chalcones can be considered as candidates for liver cancer therapeutics particularly when PI3K/Akt pathway involved in tumor development.

Evodiamine-inspired dual inhibitors of histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1) and topoisomerase 2 (TOP2) with potent antitumor activity

A great challenge in multi-targeting drug discovery is to identify drug-like lead compounds with therapeutic advantages over single target inhibitors and drug combinations. Inspired by our previous efforts in designing antitumor evodiamine derivatives, herein selective histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1) and topoisomerase 2 (TOP2) dual inhibitors were successfully identified, which showed potent in vitro and in vivo antitumor potency. Particularly, compound 30a was orally active and possessed excellent in vivo antitumor activity in the HCT116 xenograft model (TGI = 75.2%, 150 mg/kg, p.o.) without significant toxicity, which was more potent than HDAC inhibitor vorinostat, TOP inhibitor evodiamine and their combination. Taken together, this study highlights the therapeutic advantages of evodiamine-based HDAC1/TOP2 dual inhibitors and provides valuable leads for the development of novel multi-targeting antitumor agents.

Revealing quinquennial anticancer journey of morpholine: A SAR based review

Morpholine, a six-membered heterocycle containing one nitrogen and one oxygen atom, is a moiety of great significance. It forms an important intermediate in many industrial and organic syntheses. Morpholine containing drugs are of high therapeutic value. Its wide array of pharmacological activity includes anti-diabetic, anti-emetic, growth stimulant, anti-depressant, bronchodilator and anticancer. Multi-drug resistance in cancer cases have emerged in the last few years and have led to the failure of many chemotherapeutic drugs. Newer treatment methods and drugs are being developed to overcome this problem. Target based drug discovery is an effective method to develop novel anticancer drugs. To develop newer drugs, previously reported work needs to be studied. Keeping this in mind, last five year's literature on morpholine used as anticancer agents has been reviewed and summarized in the paper herein.

Antiproliferative Effects of Alkaloid Evodiamine and Its Derivatives

Alkaloids, a category of natural products with ring structures and nitrogen atoms, include most U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved plant derived anti-cancer agents. Evodiamine is an alkaloid with attractive multitargeting antiproliferative activity. Its high content in the natural source ensures its adequate supply on the market and guarantees further medicinal study. To the best of our knowledge, there is no systematic review about the antiproliferative effects of evodiamine derivatives. Therefore, in this article the review of the antiproliferative activities of evodiamine will be updated. More importantly, the antiproliferative activities of structurally modified new analogues of evodiamine will be summarized for the first time.

Recent developments in topoisomerase-targeted cancer chemotherapy

The DNA topoisomerase enzymes are essential to cell function and are found ubiquitously in all domains of life. The various topoisomerase enzymes perform a wide range of functions related to the maintenance of DNA topology during DNA replication, and transcription are the targets of a wide range of antimicrobial and cancer chemotherapeutic agents. Natural product-derived agents, such as the camptothecin, anthracycline, and podophyllotoxin drugs, have seen broad use in the treatment of many types of cancer. Selective targeting of the topoisomerase enzymes for cancer treatment continues to be a highly active area of basic and clinical research. The focus of this review will be to summarize the current state of the art with respect to clinically used topoisomerase inhibitors for targeted cancer treatment and to discuss the pharmacology and chemistry of promising new topoisomerase inhibitors in clinical and pre-clinical development.

Imidazo[2,1-b]benzothiazol Derivatives as Potential Allosteric Inhibitors of the Glucocorticoid Receptor

Glucocorticoid receptor (GCR) transactivation reporter gene assays were used as an initial high-throughput screening on a diversified library of 1200 compounds for their evaluation as GCR antagonists. A class of imidazo[2,1-b]benzothiazole and imidazo[2,1-b]benzoimidazole derivatives were identified for their ability to modulate GCR transactivation and anti-inflammatory transrepression effects utilizing GCR and NF-κB specific reporter gene assays. Modeling studies on the crystallographic structure of the GCR ligand binding domain provided three new analogues bearing the tetrahydroimidazo[2,1-b]benzothiazole scaffold able to antagonize the GCR in the presence of dexamethasone (DEX) and also defined their putative binding into the GCR structure. Both mRNA level measures of GCR itself and its target gene GILZ, on cells treated with the new analogues, showed a GCR transactivation inhibition, thus suggesting a potential allosteric inhibition of the GCR.

Antiproliferative activity and apoptosis inducing effects of nitric oxide donating derivatives of evodiamine

The first series of nitric oxide donating derivatives of evodiamine were designed and prepared. NO releasing ability of all target derivatives was evaluated in BGC-823, Bel-7402 and L-02 cells. The cytotoxicity was evaluated against three human tumor cell lines (Bel-7402, A549 and BGC-823) and normal human liver cells L-02. The nitrate derivatives 11a and 11b only exhibited moderate activity and furoxan-based derivatives 13a-c, 14a and 14b showed promising activity. 13c showed good cytotoxic selectivity between tumor and normal liver cells and was further investigated for its apoptotic properties on human hepatocarcinoma Bel-7402 cells. The molecular mode of action revealed that 13c caused cell-cycle arrest at S phase and induced apoptosis in Bel-7402 cells through mitochondria-related caspase-dependent pathways.

Histone demethylating agents as potential S-adenosyl-l-methionine-competitors

Histone H3 methylation on K9 and/or K27 depends on histone lysine methyltransferases (KMTs).

Scaffold Diversity Inspired by the Natural Product Evodiamine: Discovery of Highly Potent and Multitargeting Antitumor Agents

A critical question in natural product-based drug discovery is how to translate the product into drug-like molecules with optimal pharmacological properties. The generation of natural product-inspired scaffold diversity is an effective but challenging strategy to investigate the broader chemical space and identify promising drug leads. Extending our efforts to the natural product evodiamine, a diverse library containing 11 evodiamine-inspired novel scaffolds and their derivatives were designed and synthesized. Most of them showed good to excellent antitumor activity against various human cancer cell lines. In particular, 3-chloro-10-hydroxyl thio-evodiamine (66c) showed excellent in vitro and in vivo antitumor efficacy with good tolerability and low toxicity. Antitumor mechanism and target profiling studies indicate that compound 66c is the first-in-class triple topoisomerase I/topoisomerase II/tubulin inhibitor. Overall, this study provided an effective strategy for natural product-based drug discovery.

Evodiamine induces G2/M arrest and apoptosis via mitochondrial and endoplasmic reticulum pathways in H446 and H1688 human small-cell lung cancer cells

The goal of this study was to evaluate the ability of EVO to decrease cell viability and promote cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cells. Lung cancer has the highest incidence and mortality rates among all cancers. Chemotherapy is the primary treatment for SCLC; however, the drugs that are currently used for SCLC are less effective than those used for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Therefore, it is necessary to develop new drugs to treat SCLC. In this study, the effects of evodiamine (EVO) on cell growth, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis were investigated in the human SCLC cell lines NCI-H446 and NCI-H1688. The results represent the first report that EVO can significantly inhibit the viability of both H446 and H1688 cells in dose- and time-dependent manners. EVO induced cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase, induced apoptosis by up-regulating the expression of caspase-12 and cytochrome C protein, and induced the expression of Bax mRNA and by down-regulating of the expression of Bcl-2 mRNA in both H446 and H1688 cells. However, there was no effect on the protein expression of caspase-8. Taken together, the inhibitory effects of EVO on the growth of H446 and H1688 cells might be attributable to G2/M arrest and subsequent apoptosis, through mitochondria-dependent and endoplasmic reticulum stress-induced pathways (intrinsic caspase-dependent pathways) but not through the death receptor-induced pathway (extrinsic caspase-dependent pathway). Our findings suggest that EVO is a promising novel and potent antitumor drug candidate for SCLC. Furthermore, the cell cycle, the mitochondria and the ER stress pathways are rational targets for the future development of an EVO delivery system to treat SCLC.

Development and characterization of 3-(benzylsulfonamido)benzamides as potent and selective SIRT2 inhibitors

Inhibitors of sirtuin-2 deacetylase (SIRT2) have been shown to be protective in various models of Huntington's disease (HD) by decreasing polyglutamine aggregation, a hallmark of HD pathology. The present study was directed at optimizing the potency of SIRT2 inhibitors containing the neuroprotective sulfobenzoic acid scaffold and improving their pharmacology. To achieve that goal, 176 analogues were designed, synthesized, and tested in deacetylation assays against the activities of major human sirtuins SIRT1-3. This screen yielded 15 compounds with enhanced potency for SIRT2 inhibition and 11 compounds having SIRT2 inhibition equal to reference compound AK-1. The newly synthesized compounds also demonstrated higher SIRT2 selectivity over SIRT1 and SIRT3. These candidates were subjected to a dose-response bioactivity assay, measuring an increase in α-tubulin K40 acetylation in two neuronal cell lines, which yielded five compounds bioactive in both cell lines and eight compounds bioactive in at least one of the cell lines tested. These bioactive compounds were subsequently tested in a tertiary polyglutamine aggregation assay, which identified five inhibitors. ADME properties of the bioactive SIRT2 inhibitors were assessed, which revealed a significant improvement of the pharmacological properties of the new entities, reaching closer to the goal of a clinically-viable candidate.

Evodiamine and rutaecarpine alkaloids as highly selective transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 agonists

Despite that among non-camptothecin natural products promising anticancer therapeutics are evodiamine derivatives, involved into mechanism of physiological function of topoisomerase-I. But, more recent findings have been shown that substituted quinazole alkaloids act as transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 agonists. The TRP(V1) is a calcium ion channel, activated by pH, heat and inflammatory activators. I is implicated in pain sensing. TRPV1 agonist is capsaicine (1). Both 1 and evodiamine (2), therefore, produce same physiological response, but are structurally unrelated from chemical viewpoint. Furthermore precise mechanistic aspects of drugs receptor interactions are still not fully understood. This study is the first one, which provides assessment of molecular factors contributing significantly to selectivity of 2 and rutaecarpine (3) as well as their twenty-two new functionalized derivatives towards (TRP)V1. The suggested new functionalization type of molecular skeleton, which is completely different one in respect the known derivatives, which is implicated in treatment of variety of cancer cell lines interacting preferably with topoisomerase-I. It resulted to increasing of the binding affinity and selectivity of the functionalized derivatives specifically to (TRP)V1∈1.36-1.72 and ∈2.50-3.16 higher than 1-3.

Role of the conformational flexibility of evodiamine in its binding to protein hosts: a comparative spectroscopic and molecular modeling evaluation with rutaecarpine

The inherent structural flexibility of evodiamine allows it to adopt different conformations depending on the nature of the environment.