Synthesis of diosgenyl quaternary ammonium derivatives and their antitumor activity.

Giosgenin is a naturally steroidal saponin exhibiting a variety of biological activities including antitumor ones. A series of novel diosgenyl quaternary ammonium derivatives were designed and synthesized to develop potential anti-tumor agents in our research. All novel derivatives were characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR and HR-MS, and evaluated for their in vitro anti-proliferative activities using MTT assay. The human cancer cell lines were A549 (Human lung cancer cell), H1975 (Human lung adenocarcinoma cell), A431 (Human skin squamous cell carcinoma), HCT-116 (Human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell), Aspc-1 (Human metastatic pancreatic cancer cell), Ramos (Human B lymphoma cell), HBE (Human bronchial epithelioid cell) and LO2 (Human normal hepatocyte).