Design, synthesis and biological activities of tetrandrine and fangchinoline derivatives as antitumer agents.

The isolation and modification of natural products is always a very important resources to anti-tumor drugs. Therefore, a novel series of tetrandrine and fangchinoline derivatives were designed and synthesized, and their antiproliferative activities against HepG2, MCF-7 cells were evaluated and described. From the activity result obtained, high to very high activity in vitro has been found, one of the tested compounds (compound 5d) exhibited the most significant cytotoxic effects. Compound 5d increased 29.2, 7.37 times anti-proliferative activity for HepG2 cells and MCF-7 cells compared to sunitinib (IC50=16.06μM and 25.41μM). Finally flow cytometry determined that compound 5d could indeed inhibit the proliferation of HepG2 cells via inducing apoptosis.