Clickable conjugates of bile acids and nucleosides: Synthesis, characterization, in vitro anticancer and antituberculosis studies.

A series of clickable bile acid-nucleosides conjugates linked directly or via amino acid linker were synthesized, and characterized by spectroscopic techniques such as 1H NMR, 13C NMR, FT-IR, HRMS and HPLC. The synthesized compounds 6a-p were screened for their in vitro anticancer property against a panel of three cancer cell lines (PC-3, MCF-7, IMR-32). In addition, the synthesized derivatives were also tested for their antimycobacterial activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv (ATCC 27294 strain). Among the screened compounds, cholic acid-uridine clicked conjugate (6c), and cholic acid-uridine clicked conjugate liked via phenylalanine moiety (6m) were found to be most active against MCF-7 and IMR-32 exhibiting an IC50 value of 8.084 and 8.71 µM, respectively. The antimycobacterial study of the synthesized conjugates revealed all the conjugates to be active with MIC values in the range of 4.09-15.41 µM. Deoxycholic acid-adenosine clicked conjugate (6b) showed most promising antituberculosis property with MIC value of 4.09 µM. Most of the synthesized conjugates were found to be safe at 50 µM against normal human embryonic kidney (HEK 293 T) cell line.