Natural Aromatic Compounds as Scaffolds to Develop Selective G-Quadruplex Ligands: From Previously Reported Berberine Derivatives to New Palmatine Analogues

In this paper, the selective interactions of synthetic derivatives of two natural compounds, berberine and palmatine, with DNA G-quadruplex structures were reported. In particular, the previous works on this subject concerning berberine were further presented and discussed, whereas the results conce...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Marco Franceschin, Lorenzo Cianni, Massimo Pitorri, Emanuela Micheli, Stefano Cacchione, Claudio Frezza, Mauro Serafini, Ming-Hao Hu, Huafi Su, Zhishu Huang, Lianquan Gu, Armandodoriano Bianco
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2018-06-01
Series:Molecules
Subjects:
NMR
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/23/6/1423
Description
Summary:In this paper, the selective interactions of synthetic derivatives of two natural compounds, berberine and palmatine, with DNA G-quadruplex structures were reported. In particular, the previous works on this subject concerning berberine were further presented and discussed, whereas the results concerning palmatine are presented here for the first time. In detail, these palmatine derivatives were developed by inserting seven different small peptide basic chains, giving several new compounds that have never been reported before. The preliminary studies of the interactions of these compounds with various G-quadruplex-forming sequences were carried out by means of various structural and biochemical techniques, which showed that the presence of suitable side chains is very useful for improving the interaction of the ligands with G-quadruplex structures. Thus, these new palmatine derivatives might act as potential anticancer drugs.
ISSN:1420-3049