5- or/and 20-O-alkyl-2,3-dehydrosilybins: Synthesis and biological profiles on prostate cancer cell models

To investigate the effects of alkylation at 5-OH and 20-OH of 2,3-dehydrosilybin on prostate cancer cell proliferation, the synthetic approaches to 5- or/and 20-O-alkyl-2,3-dehydrosilybins, through a multi-step sequence from commercially available silybin, have been successfully developed. The first three reactions in the syntheses were completed through a one-pot procedure by managing anaerobic and aerobic conditions. With these synthetic methods in hand, twenty-one 2,3-dehydrosilybins, including seven 20-O-alkyl, seven 5,20-O-dialkyl, and seven 5-O-alkyl-2,3-dehydrosilybins, have been achieved for the evaluation of their biological profiles. Our WST-1 cell proliferation assay data indicate that nineteen out of the twenty-one 2,3-dehydrosilybins possess significantly improved antiproliferative potency as compared with silybin toward both androgen-sensitive (LNCaP) and androgen-insensitive prostate cancer cell lines (PC-3 and DU145). 5-O-Alkyl-2,3-dehydrosilybins were identified as the optimal subgroup that can consistently inhibit cell proliferation in three prostate cancer cell models with all IC50 values lower than 8 μM. Our flow cytometry-based assays also demonstrate that 5-O-heptyl-2,3-dehydrosilybin effectively arrests the cell cycle in the G0/G1 phase and activates PC-3 cell apoptosis.