Experimental and computational studies on newly synthesized resveratrol derivative: a new method for cancer chemoprevention and therapeutics?

Nature has been a provenance of medicinal agents for thousands of years. Resveratrol (RESL) is a naturally occurring polyphenolic compound in food stuffs such as peanuts, seeds, berries, grapes, and beverages (red wine). RESL has received significant attention due to a plethora of in vitro and in vivo reports on its cancer chemopreventive and therapeutic properties. In the present study, diacetate RESL derivative (RESL43) was synthesized. The RESL43 displayed potent cytotoxicity and triggered apoptosis in U937 cells as evidenced by poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) cleavage, DNA fragmentation, morphological changes, and activation of FasR and FasL genes. The electrophoretic mobility shift assay revealed the suppression NFkB activity in U937 cells after treatment with RESL43 in corroboration with the deactivation of NFkB dependent genes such as IL-8, TNFR, and TNFα. Furthermore, molecular docking and dynamics studies have shown that RESL and RESL43 might exert their inhibitory activity on NFkB by altering the intramolecular binding abilities between DNA and NFkB. Taken together, RESL43 can have greater putative activity than parental RESL in a context of cancer chemoprevention and therapeutics. We suggest that the diacetate resveratrol derivative RESL43 warrants further evaluation in preclinical and clinical bridging studies in the near future.