Structure and Activity of Pentacyclic Triterpenes Codrugs. A Review

Title:Structure and Activity of Pentacyclic Triterpenes Codrugs. A Review

Volume: 21 Issue: 12

Author(s): Justyna Żwawiak*, Anna Pawełczyk, Dorota Olender and Lucjusz Zaprutko

Affiliation:

• Department of Organic Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Faculty, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, Grunwaldzka 6, 60-780 Poznan,Poland

Keywords: Triterpenes, oleanolic acid, betulinic acid, codrugs, conjugates, anticancer activity.

Abstract: Triterpenes are a wide and important group of compounds that have several promising pharmacological properties, such as hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, anti-HIV, antioxidant, or anticancer activities. Such potent substances can be successfully incorporated in more complex chemical systems e.g. codrugs or pro-drugs that have a better pharmacological profile. The codrug is connected with a drug formation pathway to chemically cohere at least two drug molecules to improve positive therapeutic efficiency or decrease side effects. The codrug can be cleaved in the organism to generate effective compounds previously used as substrates. This article presents an overview of codrugs that consist of pentacyclic triterpene moiety that is chosen as a basic codrug moiety due to their wide range of vital activities and another drug molecule fragment. It was found that triterpenoid codrugs are characterized by a wide range of biological activities. However, most of them have anticancer potency.

Cite this article as:

Żwawiak Justyna*, Pawełczyk Anna , Olender Dorota and Zaprutko Lucjusz , Structure and Activity of Pentacyclic Triterpenes Codrugs. A Review, Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry 2021; 21 (12) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1389557521666210105110848