Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 9, 2026

Curation of Computational Chemical Libraries Demonstrated with Alpha-Amino Acids
Published on: April 13, 2022
Synthesis and biological evaluation of curcumin derivatives modified with α-amino boronic acid as proteasome
Wenjie Zhang1, Heyuan Bai1, Liqiang Han1
1State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100191, PR China.
Abstract:
Curcumin is a well-known pharmacophore and some of its derivatives are shown to target 20S proteasome recently. In this report, we designed and synthesized two series of curcumin derivatives modified with different α-amino boronic acids as potent proteasome inhibitors. The synthesized compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxic activities against HCT116 cells, and the results showed that all of them exhibited excellent cell growth inhibitory activity comparing with curcumin, with the IC50 values varying from 0.17 μM to 1.63 μM. Compound II-2F with free boronic acid was assayed for its proteasome inhibitory activity and the results indicated that II-2F exhibited more potent inhibitory activity against ChT-L with high subunit selectivity than any other reported curcumin derivatives.
Related Concept Videos
Amino acids
The Proteasome
In this pathway, the target proteins are first tagged with small proteins called ubiquitin. A series of enzymes carry out the ubiquitination of the target proteins - E1 (ubiquitin-activating enzyme), E2 (ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme), and E3...
The Proteasome
In this pathway, the target proteins are first tagged with small proteins called ubiquitin. This involves participation of a series of enzymes including— E1 (ubiquitin-activating enzyme), E2 (ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme), and E3...
The Proteasome
Amino Acid Catabolism
Amino Acid Biosynthetic Pathways

