Natural products taxol

This year has also seen approaches towards components of the anticancer natural product taxol from carbohydrate starting materials. Paquette and Bmley have used the 5-deoxy-5-iodo-ribofuranoside 61 as starting material for synthesis of 63, a precursor to the C ring of taxol. The carbohydrate-derived vinyl iodide 62 is transmetallated and the resulting vinyllithium reacts with terpenone 64 to afford 63 (Scheme 12). ... 

Many notable examples of the synthesis of complex natural products from optically pure starting materials have been reported (70). One synthesis of considerable interest is that of taxol [33069-62-4] (74), a potent antitumor agent used clinically. The starting material (73) used ia the first total synthesis of taxol is produced ia enantiomericaHy pure form from inexpensive and readily available /-camphor [464-48-2] (72) (73). 

Camptothecin was discovered as an active anticancer drug isolated from the bark of Camptotheca acuminata. The anticancer activity of camptothecin was discovered in the 1960s by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as part of a systematic effort to screen for novel anticancer agents derived from natural products. Monroe Wall and Mansuhk Wani identified the chemical structure of camptothecin. They also identified the chemical structure of taxol, again under the auspices of the NCI. Susan Hoiwitz was contracted by the NCI to elucidate the anticancer mechanisms of camptothecin. She found in the early 1970s that camptothecin induced DNA breaks and attested DNA and RNA synthesis. However, it is approximately 12 years later, only after DNA topo-isomerase I (Topi) had been identified in human cells, that Leroy Liu and his coworkers found that Topi was the cellular target of camptothecin [reviewed in [1]. 

The novel marine natural product laulimalide (65), a metabolite of various sponges, has received attention as a potential antitumor agent due to its taxol-like ability to stabilize microtubules. There has been considerable synthetic effort toward 65, culminating within not more than 2 years in as many as ten... 

Entry 4 involves nitrogen participation and formation of an iminium ion that is reduced by NaBH4. The reaction in Entry 5 creates an 11-methylenebicyclo[4.3.1]undecen-3-one structure found in a biologically active natural product. Note that this fragmentation creates a bridgehead double bond. Entry 6 involves construction of a portion of the taxol structure. The reaction in Entry 7 is stereospecific, leading to the E-double bond. 

The epothilones are natural products containing a 16-membered lactone ring that are isolated from mycobacteria. Epothilones A-D differ in the presence of the C(12)-C(13) epoxide and in the C(12) methyl group. Although structurally very different from Taxol, they have a similar mechanism of anticancer action and epothilone A and its analogs are of substantial current interest as chemotherapeutic agents.36 Schemes 13.59 to 13.66 summarize eight syntheses of epothilone A. Several syntheses of epothilone B have also been completed.37... 

Epothilones A, B and E (4,5 and 6) (Fig. 2) are representative members of a new class of bacterially derived natural products which exhibit potent biological activity. Isolated by Hofle and coworkers [6] from a soil sample collected near the Zambesi river, the compounds have provided a great deal of excitement in the scientific community due to their potent cytotoxicity against a number of multiple drug-resistant tumor cell lines and because of the mechanism by which they exert this effect. Like Taxol [7], the epothilones promote the combination of a- and 3-tubulin subunits and stabilize the resulting microtubule structures. This mode of action inhibits the cell division process and is, therefore, an attractive strategy for cancer chemotherapy [7,8]. 

This chapter has introduced the asymmetric synthesis of several types of natural products erythronolide A, 6-deoxyerythronolide, rifamycin S, prostaglandins and baccatin III, the polycyclic part of taxol, as well as the taxol side chain. The... 

Finally, two total syntheses of taxol, accomplished independently at the beginning of the year 1994 by Nicolaou and Holton, and their associates, will be discussed in detail as an example of a natural product, the disponibility in substantial amounts of which is of paramount importance for fighting against some types of cancer. 

Taxol (Paclitaxel) 137, a natural product derived from the bark of the Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia [213-215], and the hemisynthetic analogue Docetaxel (Taxotere) 138, two recent and promising antitumour agents, have been the matter of extensive in vivo and in vitro animal metabolic studies. The major metabolites of taxol excreted in rat bile [216] were identified as a C-4 hydroxylated derivative on the phenyl group of the acyl side chain at C-13 (139), another aromatic hydroxylation product at the mefa-position on the benzoate group at C-2 (140) and a C-13 deacylated metabolite (baccatin III, 142) the structure of six minor metabolites could not be determined. The major human liver microsomal metabolite, apparently different from those formed in rat [217], has been identified as the 6a-hydroxytaxol (141) [218, 219]. A very similar metabolic pattern was... 

Some research groups have derivatized biological active and very important natural products (Scheme 3.30) like Indolactam V (207) [297], Sarcodictyin (208) [298] Taxol (209) [299] and Vancomycin (210) [123]. For example, the soHd-phase synthesis of Indolactam derivatives (213) with three points of diversity has been reported by Waldmann et al. in 1999 (Scheme 3.31) [297]. 

Cragg GM, Schepartz SA, Sufftiess M, Grever MR. (1993) The taxol supply crisis. New NCI policies for handling the largescale production of novel natural product anticancer and anti-HIV agents. J Nat Prod 56 1657-1668. 

Oberlies NH, Kroll DJ. (2004) Camptothecin and taxol Historic achievements in natural products research. J Nat Prod 67 129-135. 

In recent years, however, some of the greatest emphasis has been placed on the search for anticancer and antiviral agents derived from natural products. Success in that area has not heen as great as that achieved in other helds. Since 1960, only seven plant-derived drugs have heen approved by the FDA for use as anticancer agents. Four of those drugs, vinblastine, vincristine, etoposide, and teniposide, were discovered in the 1950s. The last three—Taxol , topotecan, and irinotecan—were discovered and approved much more recently. 

Perhaps the most exciting story about an anticancer agent derived from a natural product is that of Taxol . That story begins in 1958, when the National Cancer Institute began a program to screen natural products for substances that might have anticancer activity. The... 

The very good yields of especially the bridgehead alkoxy derivatives 231 and the excellent regioselectivity with which they can be transformed to other skeletons plus the fact that a spirocyclopropane moiety is a mimic of and can in fact be considered as a masked gem-dimethyl substituent [28, 112] makes these products versatile precursors of certain natural products. In fact, one may conceive new approaches to the total syntheses of taxol [113-115] and of mediter-raneol [116]. Both strategies rely on the MIMIRC reaction of lithium cycloalka-dienolates [117] with the a-chloro acrylate 1-Me to produce a tricyclic precursor to the appropriate bicyclo [n.2.1]alkanedione derivative, which are key structural units of several diterpenes and their metabolites. 

Formidable chemical obstacles stood in the way of clinical development of these agents derived from natural products, notably in formulation of very poorly soluble compounds for intravenous infusion and in manufacture of bulk drug. For a time, production of Taxol from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree aroused public controversy, which became a story of nature and politics in pursuit of an anti-cancer drug [22]. 

Several natural products and pharmaceuticals have been made in which a TPAP-catalysed oxidation of a primary alcohol to aldehyde step occurs, and these are listed in 2.1.3. They include agardhilactone, (-)-ceratopicanol, eleutherobin, (-)-eriolangin, (-)-eriolanin, okadaic acid, QS-21A p, cis- rapamycin, solamin and taxol syntheses. 

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