Total synthesis and biological evaluation of oscillatoxin D, E, and F

Oscillatoxins (OTXs) and aplysiatoxins (ATXs) are biosynthetically related polyketides produced by marine cyanobacteria. We previously developed a synthetic route to phenolic O-methyl analogs of OTX-D and 30-methyl-OTX-D during collective synthesis of these natural products. According to our synthetic strategy, we achieved total synthesis of OTX-D, 30-methyl-OTX-D, OTX-E, and OTX-F by deprotecting the O-methyl group in an earlier intermediate, and determined their biological activities. Although OTX-D and 30-methyl-OTX-D have been reported to show anti-leukemic activity against L1210 cell line, we found that their cytotoxicity in vitro against this cell line is relatively weak (IC50: 29-52 μM). In contrast, OTX-F demonstrated cell line-selective anti-proliferative activity against DMS-114 lung cancer cells, which implies that OTXs target as yet unknown target molecules as part of this unique activity.