Syntheses of lactam derivatives of chenodeoxycholic acid and in vitro antiproliferative activity

With chenodeoxycholic acid as starting material, a series of lactam derivatives of chenodeoxycholic acid was synthesized and their antiproliferative activities against some cancer cells were determined. Among the synthesized derivatives, compounds 6 and 18 displayed distinct antiproliferative activity against PC-3, H-292, SKBR3 and Hey-1B cancer cells, and compounds 10, 17 and 18 showed significant antiproliferative activity against SKBR3 cells. Our results reveal that the position of hydroximino on ring A or B of the parental scaffold dramatically affects the antiproliferative activity of these compounds. The conversion of 7-hydroximino to other substituent or 7-hydroximino to 3-hydroximino in the compounds resulted in a dramatic decrease of the antiproliferative activity, suggesting the importance of 7-hydroximino group for the biological activity of the compounds. The structure/activity correlation generated from the studies provides valuable information for the further design of novel chemotherapeutic drugs.