Design, synthesis and cytotoxic activity of novel lipophilic cationic derivatives of diosgenin and sarsasapogenin

Ren-Feng An; Kai-Tian Wu; Jie Pan; Wen-Jin Zhang; Hui-Ying Qin; Xiao-Rui Li; Wei Liu; Xue-Feng Huang

doi:10.1016/j.bmcl.2025.130094

Design, synthesis and cytotoxic activity of novel lipophilic cationic derivatives of diosgenin and sarsasapogenin

Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2025 Jan 6:119:130094. doi: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2025.130094. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Ren-Feng An¹, Kai-Tian Wu¹, Jie Pan², Wen-Jin Zhang¹, Hui-Ying Qin¹, Xiao-Rui Li¹, Wei Liu³, Xue-Feng Huang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Natural Medicinal Chemistry, School of Chinese Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009 China.
² Department of Pharmacology, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029 China.
³ Department of Pharmacology, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029 China. Electronic address: liuweicp@njmu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Natural Medicinal Chemistry, School of Chinese Pharmacy, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210009 China. Electronic address: hxf@cpu.edu.cn.

PMID: 39778752
DOI: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2025.130094

Abstract

Novel lipophilic cationic derivatives including quaternary ammonium salt and triphenylphosphine series were designed and synthesized using diosgenin (1) and sarsasapogenin (2) as substrates to improve the cytotoxicity and selectivity. Most of the derivatives showed higher cytotoxicity against all cancer cell lines tested, compound 13 exhibited the most superior activity against A549 cells with an IC₅₀ value of 0.95 μM, which was 34-fold of diosgenin. Preliminary cellular mechanism studies elucidated that compound 13 might arrest cell cycle at G0/G1 phase, trigger apoptosis via up-regulating the expression of Bax, down-regulating the expression of Bcl-2 and caspase-3, and induce an increase in the generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) in A549 cells. In addition, molecular docking analysis revealed that compound 13 could occupy the active site of p38α-MAPK well and interact to the surrounding amino acids by salt bridge and conjugation. These results suggested that compound 13 had the potential to serve as an antitumor lead agent, probably exert antitumor effect through mitochondrial pathway and p38α MAPK pathway.

Keywords: Cell cycle arrest and apoptosis; Cytotoxicity; Diosgenin; Lipophlic cations; Sarsasapogenin.