Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of novel tripeptidyl epoxyketone derivatives constructed from β-amino acid as proteasome inhibitors

Abstract

A series of novel tripeptidyl epoxyketone derivatives constructed from β-amino acid were designed, synthesized and evaluated as proteasome inhibitors. All target compounds were tested for their proteasome inhibitory activities and selected compounds were tested for their anti-proliferation activities against two multiple myeloma (MM) cell lines RPMI 8226 and NCI-H929. Among them, eleven compounds exhibited proteasome inhibitory rates of more than 50% at the concentration of 1 μg/mL and nine compounds showed anti-proliferation activities with IC50 values at low micromolar level. Compound 20h displayed the most potent proteasome inhibitory activities (IC50: 0.11 ± 0.01 μM) and anti-proliferation activities with IC50 values at 0.23 ± 0.01 and 0.17 ± 0.02 μM against two tested cell lines. Additionally, the poly-ubiquitin accumulation in the western blot analysis supported that proteasome inhibition in a cellular system was induced by compound 20h. All these experimental results confirmed that β-amino acid can be introduced as a building block for the development of proteasome inhibitors.

Keywords: Anti-cancer; Drug design; Epoxyketone; Proteasome inhibitors; SARs; β-Amino acid.