Jatrophanes as promising multidrug resistance modulators: Advances of structure-activity relationships

The phytochemical study of Euphorbia helioscopia afforded euphornin (1) in a large amount. Alkaline hydrolysis of 1 using potassium carbonate yielded the main product monodeacetyleuphornin (2), whose structural modification at 14-OH gave rise to 21 acylated derivatives euphornoate A-U (3-23). Thus, a mini compound library of jatrophanes was established to screen for MDR modulators. Biological studies clearly demonstrated the effect of C-14 pattern modification in MDR reversal activity and several compounds with RF values over 300 fold at 20 μM (6, 16, 20, 22, 23) were thought to be promising MDR modulators. The SARs are discussed, which reveal that introduction of an alkyl acyl group bearing 4 carbons at C-14 or an aryl acyl group with electron donating groups is favorable for the activity.