Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel hydrogen sulfide releasing glycyrrhetic acid derivatives

Abstract

<p>A series of hybrids, which are composed of glycyrrhetic acid (GA) and slowly hydrogen sulfide-releasing donor ADT-OH, were designed and synthesized to develop anticancer and anti-inflammatory agents. Most of the compounds, whose inhibitory rates were comparable to or higher than those of GA and aspirin, respectively, significantly inhibited xylene-induced ear edema in mice. Especially, compound V<b>₄</b>exhibited the most potent inhibitory rate of 60.7%. Furthermore, preliminary structure–activity relationship studies demonstrated that 3-substituted GA derivatives had stronger anti-inflammatory activities than the corresponding 3-unsubstituted GA derivatives. In addition, anti-proliferative activities of compounds <b>V₁₋₉</b> were evaluated in three different human cancer cell lines. Compound <b>V₄</b> showed the most high potency against all three tumor cell lines with IC₅₀ values ranging from 10.01 μM in Hep G2 cells to 17.8 μM in MDA-MB-231 cells, which were superior to positive GA.</p