A cytotoxic agent from Strychnos nux-vomica and biological evaluation of its modified analogues.

Journal Article

, M. Khan, Ankur Garg, S. K. Srivastava*, Mahendra P. Darokar. . 2012

• Magazine \ Newspaper: Medicinal Chemistry Research.
• Issue Number: 10
• Volume Number: 21
• Pages: 2975-2980.

Publication Abstract

Although a number of chemicals have been isolated from Strychnos nux-vomica, only a few have been evaluated for their biological significance. As a part of our drug discovery programme for cytotoxic agents from Indian medicinal plants, a novel cytotoxic agent, loganin (1) was isolated from the fruit pulp of S. nux-vomica. The loganin (1) showed significant anticancer activity against the human liver (WRL-68), colon (COLO-320 and CaCo2), ovarian (PA-1) and breast (MCF-7) cancer cell lines. Loganin (1) was further chemically transformed into eleven semi-synthetic derivatives 2-12 of which  2', 3', 4', 7-tetra-O-acetyl-6'-O-(3''', 4''', 5''')-trimethoxybenzoyl loganin (11) and 2', 3', 4', 7-tetra-O-acetyl-6'-O-lauroyl loganin (6) derivatives showed 8, 13 and 3 times while 2', 3', 4', 7-tetra-O-acetyl-6'-O-lauroyl loganin (6) showed equal, 13 and 2 times more activity against human suspension colon (CaCo2), adherent colon (COLO-320) and liver (WRL-68) cancer cell lines respectively than the known anticancer agent, vinblastine.  The other analogues (except 4, 8 & 9) and loganin also showed marginal to moderate anticancer activity against the five tested human cancer cell lines.