Design, Synthesis and In-Vitro Antitumor Activity of Lupeol Derivatives via Modification at C-3 and C-30 Positions

Lupeol has been isolated from ethanol extract of stem bark of Bombax ceiba through normal phase column chromatography. Total fourteen derivatives of lupeol were synthesized and assayed for in vitro antitumor activities against MDA MB-231, HeLa and A549 cell lines. In cell proliferation experiments, pyrimidine-2(5H)-thione derivative (15) was found to be most potent and significantly inhibited all three tested cancer cell lines i. e. MDA MB-231 (IC50 27.13 +/- 2.13), HeLa (IC50 45.95 +/- 1.42) and A549 (IC50 46.27 +/- 0.9). The (2, 4-dinitrophenyl) hydrazyl-3-lupeol Derivative (12) exhibited antitumor activity against MDA MB-231 (IC50 35.88 +/- 1.9) and HeLa cells (IC50 31.91 +/- 1.6) whereas (2, 4-dinitrophenyl)-2H-imidazole derivative (14) showed activity against MDA MB-231 (IC50 38.05 +/- 1.9) and A549 (IC50 42.01 +/- 0.90) cells respectively. Structure activity relationship is also described. Our study showed that compound 15 exhibited promising activity against MDA MB-231 and A549 cancer cell lines.