Design, Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Novel Catalpol Derivatives as Potential Pancreatic Cancer inhibitors.

A series of C10-position imidazole-modified catalpol derivatives are specifically designed and synthesized for serving as potential pancreatic cancer inhibitors, which are characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR and high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). They were evaluated by the MTT method on two human pancreatic cancer cells PANC-1, BxPC-3 and normal pancreatic cell HPDE6-C7, which showed the drastic inhibitory effected on the growth of human pancreatic cancer cells of PANC-1 and BxPC-3, especially 91.6% efficacy on BxPC-3, and 73.1% on PANC-1. Simulation studies like molecular docking supported strong binding of VEGFR-2 protein tyrosine kinase (PDB ID: 4AGD), a target of pancreatic cancer. A feasible chemical approach was provided to modify the catalpol structure, giving rise to additional functionalities, which could potentially develop into anti-pancreatic cancer drug candidates in the future.