Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Natural Products Derivatives

Natural products continue to be interesting building blocks for the preparation of different types of derivatives that could result useful for their pharmacological activity or for their potential as probes due to the compatibility of the natural products for physiological medium. The use of epothilone A, camptothecin, thiocolchicine, taxol and cephalomannine as building blocks will be reported together with the biological evaluation. In particular the use of epothilone A and camptothecin to generate dimeric structures will be discussed and their activity toward tubulin and topoisomerases will be presented. For this type of compounds the results of antiangiogenic evaluation will be presented. Thiocolchicine, taxol and cephalomannine were used for the preparation of fluorescent compounds with the aim to use them as probes in the study of the dynamic of tubulin polymerization. A brief overview of the natural compounds described in the literature as inhibitors of angiogenesis will be presented.