Bioactive natural, biocatalytic, and semisynthetic tobacco cembranoids.

The two major Nicotiana tabacum tobacco cembranoids, (1 S,2 E,4 R,6 R,7 E,11 E)-2,7,11-cembratriene-4,6-diol (1) and its C-4 epimer, exhibit a wide range of interesting biological activities. Although the tumorigenesis inhibition activity of tobacco cembranoids have been known since the mid 1980's, only a limited number of investigations have targeted their optimization and structure-activity relationship. This study reports the isolation of the new (1 S,2 E,4 S,6 E,8 S,11 E)-2,6,11-cembratriene-8- O-methyl-4,8-diol (3) and the known (1 S,2 E,4 R,6 R,7 E,11 E)-2,7,11-cembratriene-4- O-methyl-4,6-diol (2) from fresh N. tabacum leaves. Cembranoid 2 showed good anti-migratory activity against prostate cancer cell lines, and was therefore subjected to microbial transformation and semisynthetic optimization studies. Biotransformation of 2 using the fungal strains Cunninghamella NRRL 5695 and Mucor ramannianus ATCC 9628 afforded new ( 4 and 5) and known ( 6 and 7) metabolites. Semisynthetic esterification, oxidation, epoxidation, and reaction with Lawesson's reagent afforded the new products 8- 14. Cembranoid 2 and its epoxidation product 9 showed potent anti-migratory activities against the highly metastatic human prostate cancer cell lines PC-3M-CT+ (spheroid disaggregation assay) and PC-3 (wound-healing assay). © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.