Introduction:
Cannabis biosynthesizes Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA-A), which decarboxylates into Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). There is growing interest in the therapeutic use of THCA-A, but its clinical application may be hampered by instability. THCA-A lacks cannabimimetic effects; we hypothesize that it has little binding affinity at cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1).Materials and Methods: Purity of certified reference standards were tested with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Binding affinity of THCA-A and THC at human (h) CB1 and hCB2 was measured in competition binding assays, using transfected HEK cells and [3H]CP55,940. Efficacy at hCB1 and hCB2 was measured in a cyclic adenosine monophosphase (cAMP) assay, using a Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET) biosensor.Results: The THCA-A reagent contained 2% THC. THCA-A displayed small but measurable binding at both hCB1 and hCB2, equating to approximate Ki values of 3.1μM and 12.5μM, respectively. THC showed 62-fold greater affinity at hCB1 and 125-fold greater affinity at hCB2. In efficacy tests, THCA-A (10μM) slightly inhibited forskolin-stimulated cAMP at hCB1, suggestive of weak agonist activity, and no measurable efficacy at hCB2.Discussion: The presence of THC in our THCA-A certified standard agrees with decarboxylation kinetics (literature reviewed herein), which indicate contamination with THC is nearly unavoidable. THCA-A binding at 10μM approximated THC binding at 200nM. We therefore suspect some of our THCA-A binding curve was artifact—from its inevitable decarboxylation into THC—and the binding affinity of THCA-A is even weaker than our estimated values. We conclude that THCA-A has little affinity or efficacy at CB1 or CB2.
Rising resistance to current clinical antibacterial agents is an imminent threat to global public health and highlights the demand for new lead compounds for drug discovery. One such potential lead compound, the peptide antibiotic teixobactin, was recently isolated from an uncultured bacterial source, and demonstrates remarkably high potency against a wide range of resistant pathogens without apparent development of resistance. A rare amino acid residue component of teixobactin, enduracididine, is only known to occur in a small number of natural products that also possess promising antibiotic activity. This review highlights the presence of enduracididine in natural products, its biosynthesis together with a review of analogues of enduracididine. Reported synthetic approaches to the cyclic guanidine structure of enduracididine are discussed, illustrating the challenges encountered to date in the development of efficient synthetic routes to facilitate drug discovery efforts inspired by the discovery of teixobactin.
Covering: up to April 20182-Formylpyrroles are ubiquitous in nature, arising from the non-enzymatic Maillard reactions of amines and sugars. Often confused for secondary metabolites, these Maillard products display interesting biological activities including hepatoprotective, immunostimulatory, antiproliferative and antioxidant effects. This review presents all 2-formylpyrrole natural products reported to date and identifies structural sub-classes for their categorisation. The origin, biological activity and chemical syntheses of these natural products are discussed herein.
In the last decade the use of homogenous gold catalysts has rapidly grown and become a valuable tool for complex natural product synthesis. Spiroketal natural products are valuable targets for total synthesis and medicinal chemistry applications. The use of gold catalysts has emerged as a useful tool to synthesise these privileged scaffolds. This review summarises the application of gold catalysis for the syntheses of spiro, bridged and fused ketal natural products.
The cyclic depsipeptide, teixobactin, possesses promising activity against a range of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) pathogenic bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Teixobactin contains a number of non-canonical residues, including the synthetically challenging amino acid, l-allo-enduracididine, complicating clinical application of this peptide. Herein, we report the synthesis of six analogues of teixobactin, in which the non-canonical l-allo-enduracididine amino acid is replaced by isosteric, commercially available Fmoc-amino acid building blocks. Biological evaluation of the analogues has revealed promising activity, particularly for guanidine isosteres, against AMR strains of S. aureus and Enterococcus faecalis, highlighting the potential for this class of cyclic depsipeptides in the treatment of Gram-positive infections.
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