rebeccamycin represent an important class of antitumour drugs. In the course of our structure–activity relationship studies, new rebeccamycin analoguesmodified at the imide moiety were synthesised. The antiproliferative activity of the compounds was evaluated on three human cancer cell lines, A2780 (ovarian cancer), H460 (lung cancer), and GLC4 (small-cell lung cancer). The in vitro cytotoxicity of