Anticancer activity of synthetic analogues of the phorboxazoles

The phorboxazoles are recently described natural products that are extremel y cytostatic towards the National Cancer Institute's panel of 60 tumor cell lines. We report here the results of preliminary structure-activity studie s of synthetic analogues of the phorboxazoles against BT-20 breast cancer. NALM-6 B-lineage ALL, U373 brain tumor, and U373 glioblastoma cell lines. T hese data indicate the importance of several of the natural products' struc tural moieties for potent anticancer activity. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Lt d. All rights reserved.