Isolation from Streptomyces of a novel naphthoquinone compound, naphthablin, that inhibits Abl oncogene functions.

In the course of our screening for inhibitors of abl oncogene function, a culture filtrate of Streptomyces aculeolatus, induced normal flat morphology in v-abl-expressing NIH3T3 cells. The active substance was isolated through ethyl acetate extraction, silica gel column chromatography, and reverse-phase HPLC. Mass and NMR spectroscopy including HMBC revealed that it had a novel naphthoquinone structure with a monoterpene, and we named it "naphthablin". Naphthablin inhibited Abl-induced morphological transformation in v-ablts-NIH3T3 cells at around 30 micrograms/ml, and specifically inhibited RNA synthesis.