Anticancer activity of synthetic analogues of the phorboxazoles

The phorboxazoles are recently described natural products that are extremely cytostatic towards the National Cancer Instituteʹs panel of 60 tumor cell lines. We report here the results of preliminary structure–activity studies of synthetic analogues of the phorboxazoles against BT-20 breast cancer, NALM-6 B-lineage ALL, U373 brain tumor, and U373 glioblastoma cell lines. These data indicate the importance of several of the natural productsʹ structural moieties for potent anticancer activity.