Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel 3′-difluorovinyl taxoids

A series of 3′-difluorovinyl taxoids with C10 modifications, as well as those with C2 and C10 modifications, were strategically designed to block the metabolism by cytochrome P-450 3A4 enzyme and synthesized. These novel difluorovinyl taxoids were evaluated for their cytotoxicity against drug-sensitive human breast (MCF7), multidrug-resistant (MDR) human ovarian (NCI/ADR), human colon (HT-29) and human pancreatic (PANC-1) cancer cell lines. 3′-Difluorovinyl taxoids exhibit several to 16 times better activity against MCF7, HT-29 and PANC-1 cell lines and up to three orders of magnitude higher potency against NCI/ADR cell line as compared to paclitaxel. Structure-activity relationship study shows the critical importance of the C2 modifications on the activity against MDR cancer cell line, while the C10 modifications have a rather minor effect on the potency with some exceptions. The effect of the C2 modifications on potency against MCF7 cell line increases in the following order: H < F < Cl < N ₃. Among the twenty five 3′-difluorovinyl taxoids evaluated, eight taxoids exhibited less than 100 pM IC ₅₀ values against MCF7 cell line. Difluorovinyl taxoids induced GTP-independent tubulin polymerization much faster than paclitaxel. Then, the resulting microtubules were stable to Ca ²⁺-induced depolymerization, indicating strong stabilization of microtubules. Molecular modeling study indicated that a difluorovinyl taxoid binds to β-tubulin in a manner that is consistent with the REDOR-Taxol structure. The difluorovinyl group appears to mimic the isobutenyl group to some extent, but with very different electronic property, which may account for the unique activities of difluorovinyl taxoids.