Many successful treatments for disease, including cancer, are derived from living organisms that produce exotic compounds. A class of these compounds, antitumor antibiotics, is effective against bacterial cultures as well as tumor cells. Another class of chemotherapeutic agents is the telomerase inhibitors. These compounds interrupt the activity of the telomerase protein, which is usually active in tumor cells. Recently a molecule demonstrated to be both an antitumor antibiotic and telomerase inhibitor, UCS1025A, was isolated with its congener UCS1025B from a fungal strain, Acremonium sp. KY4917. Because the biological activity of UCS1025A shows it to be potentially useful as a selective chemotherapy agent, this proposal seeks to develop a chemical synthesis that will allow for generation of quantities of the compound sufficient for further study and will allow for molecular alteration of this compound to enhance its effectiveness as a cancer therapeutic. To accomplish this synthesis, a rapid and powerful synthetic tandem reaction strategy will be studied and applied toward this telomerase inhibitor. Once the synthesis is developed, analogues of the target molecule will be prepared and tested for increased effectiveness as therapeutic agents.
