Publications by authors named "De-Sheng Cai"

Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on developing new antibacterial agents to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria, particularly Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
  • A series of glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) derivatives were synthesized, with compound 11 demonstrating the strongest antibacterial activity against MRSA at an MIC of 3.125 μM, much more effective than traditional antibiotics like penicillin and norfloxacin.
  • The mechanism of compound 11 was found to obstruct arginine biosynthesis and metabolites, and it also showed good biocompatibility in various tests, highlighting its potential as a candidate for treating MRSA infections.
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Podophyllotoxin's undifferentiated cytotoxicity and poor selectivity limit its clinical application. To improve above disadvantages, conjugation of bile acids with podophyllotoxin could improve cell line selectivity of liver cancer to achieve clinical translation further. Enlightened by the bile acids' moiety magic characters, thirty podophyllotoxin-linked bile acid derivatives had been designed and synthesized.

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The ligustrazine - betulin derivative (TB), TB amino acids derivatives (TB-01 - TB-09) and TB dipeptide derivatives (TB-10 - TB-18) were designed and synthesized. And their in vitro cytotoxic activities were evaluated against four cancer cell lines (Hela, HepG2, BGC-823 and HT-29) and normal cells MDCK by standard methylthiazol tetrazolium (MTT) assay. Most of them demonstrated better antitumor activity than the relevant material betulin.

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As for complex brain diseases involved with multiple pathogenic factors, it is extremely difficult to achieve curative effect by acting on a single target. Multi-approach drugs provide a promising prospect in the treatment of complex brain diseases and have been attracting more and more interest. Enlightened by synergetic effect of combination in traditional herb medicines, forty-two novel cinnamic acid derivatives were designed and synthesized by introducing capsaicin and/or ligustrazine moieties to enhance biological activities in both neurological function and neurovascular protection.

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Glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) had been the star anticancer lead compound and appealed to many scientists all over the world; however, its antitumor activity was not potent enough. To improve GA's cytoxicity and explore the effect of bonding mode on antitumor activity, 32 compounds including GA-OH series (GO, esters in C-3 position) and GA-NH series (GN, with amide linkages in C-3 position) had been designed and synthesized. All the compounds were screened for in vitro cytotoxicity against A549, HepG2, MCF-7, Hela and MDCK cell lines.

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Clinical applications of camptothecin () have been heavily hindered due to its non-targeted toxicity, active lactone ring instability, and poor water solubility. Targeted drug delivery systems may offer the possibility to overcome the above issues as reported. In this research, a series of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-activated prodrugs were designed and synthesized by coupling water-soluble pentapeptide, a PSMA hydrolyzing substrate, to through an appropriate linker.

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Hederagenin () is a novel triterpene template for the development of new antitumor compounds. In this study, 26 new ⁻pyrazine derivatives were synthetized in an attempt to develop potent antitumor agents; they were screened for in vitro cytotoxicity against tumor and non-tumor cell lines The majority of these derivatives showed much stronger cytotoxic activity than . Remarkably, the most potent was compound (half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC) was 3.

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