Prostate cancer (PC) is a major health issue in the world. Treatments of localized PC are
quite efficient and usually involve surgery, radiotherapy and/or hormonal therapy. Metastatic PC is
however rarely curable to this day. Treatments of metastatic PC involve radiotherapy, chemotherapy
and hormonal treatment such as orchiectomy, antiandrogens and luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone
agonists. The suppression of tumor growth by hormonal treatment is efficient but overtime resistance
still occurs and the disease progresses. Thus, more urgently than ever there is a need for discovery
of new treatment options for castration-resistant PC (CRPC). Hence, we designed and tested a series
of amide derivatives located at position 7α of testosterone as prospective “natural” or “semisynthetic”
anticancer agents against CRPC with the goal of discovering therapeutic alternatives for the
disease. This manuscript describes an efficient path towards the target molecules that are made in only 6 or 7 chemical
steps from testosterone in good overall yields. This strategy can be used to make several compounds of interest that present
higher biological activity than the classic antiandrogen; cyproterone acetate (3). The best testosterone-7α-amide was
the N-2-pyridylethylamide (25) which was as active as the antiandrogen cyproterone acetate (3) on androgen-dependent
LNCaP cells and 2.7 times more active on androgen-independent PC3 prostate cancer cells. The results obtained show the
synthetic feasibility and the potential for future development of this unique class of semi-synthetic anticancer agents that
offer the premise of new treatment modalities for patients afflicted with CRPC.
前列腺癌(
PC)是全球主要的健康问题。局部前列腺癌的治疗相当有效,通常包括手术、放射治疗和/或激素治疗。然而,转移性前列腺癌至今仍很少能治愈。转移性
PC 的治疗包括放疗、化疗和激素治疗,如睾丸切除术、抗雄激素和促
黄体生成素释放激素激动剂。激素治疗能有效抑制肿瘤生长,但随着时间的推移,仍会出现耐药性,导致病情恶化。因此,现在比以往任何时候都更迫切需要发现治疗阉割耐药
PC(CR
PC)的新方案。因此,我们设计并测试了一系列位于
睾酮 7α 位的
酰胺衍
生物,将其作为治疗 CR
PC 的 "
天然 "或 "半合成 "抗癌药物,目的是发现该疾病的替代治疗方法。本手稿介绍了一种高效的目标分子制备途径,只需 6 或 7 个
化学步骤,就能从
睾酮中制备出总体产量良好的目标分子。这种策略可用于制造几种感兴趣的化合物,其
生物活性高于传统的抗雄激素
醋酸环丙孕酮(3)。最好的
睾酮-7α-
酰胺是 N-2-
吡啶乙
酰胺(25),它对依赖雄激素的 LNCaP 细胞的活性与抗雄激素
醋酸环丙孕酮(3)相当,而对不依赖雄激素的
PC3 前列腺癌细胞的活性是后者的 2.7 倍。研究结果表明,这类独特的半合成抗癌剂具有合成可行性和未来发展潜力,为 CR
PC 患者提供了新的治疗方式。