Abstract:
Caerulomycin A, a marine natural product was isolated from the
fermentation broth of Streptomyces caeruleus with antibiotic, antifungal, and
cytotoxic activities. The structure of caerulomycin A contains a bipyridinic molecular
as a core structure with a substituted oxime functional group. In the first part, we
designed and synthesized of caerulomycin A and its analogues by a convenient and
efficient method. The total synthesis of caerulomycin A was carried out via flexible
method involving three important steps including amidation, intramolecular aldoltype condensation and oxidation reactions starting from commercially available
reagents using metal-free catalyst. Caerulomycin A was employed as a precursor for
further modification to new isoxazolyl caerulomycin analogues by using click
reaction with various alkynes. Moreover, the second series of alkyl ether
caerulomycin derivatives was synthesized via 4-hydroxyl bipyridine by using
alkylation, oxidation, and condensation reactions respectively. All synthetic
compounds were obtained in moderate to excellent yields under standard conditions.
All the synthesized compounds were evaluated in vitro against seven cancer cell lines.
The synthetic caerulomycin A derivatives exhibited cytotoxic activity in many cancer
cell lines including the human intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (KKU-M213), human
squamous cell carcinoma (FaDu), human colorectal adenocarcinoma (HT-29), human
mammary gland/breast adenocarcinoma (MDA-MB-231), human lung carcinoma (A549), and human neuroblastoma (SH-SY5Y). The novel caerulomycin A derivatives
can be used as lead compounds for drug development of anti-cancer agent in the
future.