Cytotoxic neolignans: an SAR study

The neolignans, magnolol 1 and honokiol 2 have been reported to inhibit the growth of several tumor cell lines in vitro and in vivo. The chemical structure of magnolol and honokiol consists of biphenyl skeleton with phenolic and allylic functionalities. Analogs of 1 and 2 containing different substitution have been studies for their effect on the growth of Hep-G2 and their structure–activity relationships were reported in this work.