Synthesis, cytotoxic activities and cell cycle arrest profiles of naphtho[2,1-α]pyrrolo[3,4-c]carbazole-5,7(6H,12H)-dione glycosides.

Naphtho[2,1-α]pyrrolo[3,4-c]carbazole-5,7(6H,12H)-dione (NPCD) is known to be a very potent and selective cyclin D1-CDK4 inhibitors and could induce strong G1 phase arrest in breast tumor cell lines. In this work, the synthesis of five NPCD glycosides and their cytotoxic activities against eight tumor cell lines are presented, as well as the investigation of their cell cycle arrest profiles. The results showed that the introduction of a sugar moiety onto NPCD did not affect much of their cytotoxic activities, while the subtle structure of the sugar moiety affected the underlying mechanism strongly. In addition, NPCD showed distinct cell-cycle arrest profiles in BxPC3 prostate cells and MCF-7 breast cells, while NPCD glycosides shared similar cell cycle arrest profiles in MCF-7 and BxPC3 cells, which also indicated that not only the indolocarbazole framework as well known before but the sugar moiety can have a profound impact on the mechanism of action for these types of compounds.