Design, synthesis, and anticancer activity evaluation of curcumol derivatives.

A new series of C-14 curcumol derivatives as potent anticancer agents were designed and synthesized by click reaction, whose structures were confirmed by H NMR,C NMR, and HRMS analysis. All the synthesized compounds were evaluated for antitumor activity against colorectal cancer cell lines SW620 and HCT116. Most of them exhibited higher inhibitory activity than curcumol. Especially, compound shows good inhibitory activity against SW620 with IC value of 8.10 ± 0.13 μM. The structure-activity relationships (SARs) of these derivatives were discussed. In addition, flow cytometry revealed that compound induced SW620 cells apoptosis by facilitating apoptosis-related proteins expressions. Our findings suggested that fluorine functional group on phenyl ring tended to increase the anticancer activity.