Synthesis and activity evaluation of tilorone analogs as potential anticancer agents.

Tilorone is an interferon inducer with anticancer activity. Twenty-two novel tilorone analogs were synthesized by improvements of fluorenone skeleton, side chains and amino groups to screen new anticancer agents. In vitro evaluation showed that ten new compounds had better anticancer activities than tilorone. Among them, 2c (IC50 < 7 μM against cancer cell lines and IC50 > 35 μM against non-cancer cell lines) and 5d (IC50 < 10 μM against cancer cell lines and IC50 > 53 μM against non-cancer cell lines) exhibited the best anticancer activities and selectivities. Pharmacophore modeling of highly active compounds was carried out by Molecular Operating Environment (MOE) to generate a visualized model for compound design in future study.