Pyrindamycin B

The duocarmycins and (+)-CC-1065 are amongst the most potent antitumour antibiotics discovered to date and yet have not progressed into the clinic. The natural products are extremely stable to nucleophilic attack until bound to their DNA target and are not substrates for any other biological nucleophile. The mechanism for this target activation of the duocarmycins is discussed with relation to both an acid-catalyzed activation and a binding-induced conformational change leading to ground state destabilization. It is suggested that targeting of the duocarmycins to their site of action in a tumour may be more important than introducing systemically-activated prodrugs as the natural product itself can be considered to be a type of prodrug, activated only on binding to its targets. Methods that have been used to target CC-1065 and the duocarmycins are reviewed as well as efforts towards systemically activated prodrugs. A simple analysis of the approaches that could be taken to vary the structure for targeting is suggested.

Pyrindamycins A(1) and B(2) exhibited stronger cytotoxic activities than doxorubicin towards murine and human tumor cell lines and especially towards doxorubicin-resistant cells. Pyrindamycins A and B were also active in vivo against P388/ADR, a multidrug-resistant tumor cell line. Intracellular accumulation of pyrindamycins A and B in P388/ADR was the same as in P388. These antibiotics strongly inhibited DNA synthesis compared with RNA or protein synthesis. They showed significant therapeutic effects towards murine leukemia, but not to solid tumors.

Six duocarmycins have been discovered during our search for new antitumor antibiotics and they showed extremely potent cytotoxic activity with IC50 values of 10(-12) M-10(-9) M on HeLa S3 cell. Three different producing strains isolated from soils were taxonomically assigned as Streptomyces. Duocarmycin A was unstable in culture broth, so improved culture conditions were designed to produce a high titer of duocarmycins B1, B2, C1 and C2 which are halogenated seco-compounds of duocarmycin A. Duocarmycin SA, one of the most potent cytotoxic agents yet discovered, was shown to be more stable in culture media than duocarmycin A, despite the structural similarity on their spirocyclopropylhexadienone moiety. In contrast to the duocarmycin A fermentation, no halogenated seco-compounds of duocarmycin SA were detected in culture broth supplemented with Br- or Cl-. All duocarmycins could be produced using one producing strain with improved media and culture conditions.