Salinosporamide A

Salinosporamide A was discovered by William Fenical and Paul Jensen from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA. In preliminary screening, a high percentage of the organic extracts of cultured Salinispora strains possessed antibiotic and anticancer activities, which suggests that these bacteria are an excellent resource for drug discovery. Salinispora strain CNB-392 was isolated from a heat-treated marine sediment sample and cytotoxicity-guided fractionation of the crude extract led to the isolation of salinosporamide A. Although salinosporamide A shares an identical bicyclic ring structure with omuralide, it is uniquely functionalized. Salinosporamide A displayed potent in vitro cytotoxicity against HCT-116 human colon carcinoma with an IC50 value of 11 ng mL-1. This compound also displayed potent and highly selective activity in the NCI's 60-cell-line panel with a mean GI50 value (the concentration required to achieve 50% growth inhibition) of less than 10 nM and a greater than 4 log LC50 differential between resistant and susceptible cell lines. The greatest potency was observed against NCI-H226 non-small cell lung cancer, SF-539 brain tumor, SK-MEL-28 melanoma, and MDA-MB-435 melanoma (formerly misclassified as breast cancer^[3]), all with LC50 values less than 10 nM. Salinosporamide A was tested for its effects on proteasome function because of its structural relationship to omuralide. When tested against purified 20S proteasome, salinosporamide A inhibited proteasomal chymotrypsin-like proteolytic activity with an IC50 value of 1.3 nM.^[4] This compound is approximately 35 times more potent than omuralide which was tested as a positive control in the same assay. Thus, the unique functionalization of the core bicyclic ring structure of salinosporamide A appears to have resulted in a molecule that is a significantly more potent proteasome inhibitor than omuralide.^[1]

Salinosporamide A inhibits proteasome activity by covalently modifying the active site threonine residues of the 20S proteasome.^{[citation needed]}

It was originally hypothesized that salinosporamide B was a biosynthetic precursor to salinosporamide A due to their structural similarities.^{[citation needed]}

It was thought that the halogenation of the unactivated methyl group was catalyzed by a non-heme iron halogenase.^[5][6] Recent work using ¹³C-labeled feeding experiments reveal distinct biosynthetic origins of salinosporamide A and B.^[5][7]

While they share the biosynthetic precursors acetate and presumed β-hydroxycyclohex-2'-enylalanine (3), they differ in the origin of the four-carbon building block that gives rise to their structural differences involving the halogen atom. A hybrid polyketide synthase-nonribosomal peptide synthetase (PKS-NRPS) pathway is most likely the biosynthetic mechanism in which acetyl-CoA and butyrate-derived ethylmalonyl-CoA condense to yield the β-ketothioester (4), which then reacts with (3) to generate the linear precursor (5).

The first stereoselective synthesis was reported by Rajender Reddy Leleti and E. J.Corey.^[8] Later several routes to the total synthesis of salinosporamide A have been reported.^{[8][9][10][11]}

In vitro studies using purified 20S proteasomes showed that salinosporamide A has lower EC50 for trypsin-like (T-L) activity than does bortezomib. In vivo animal model studies show marked inhibition of T-L activity in response to salinosporamide A, whereas bortezomib enhances T-L proteasome activity.

Initial results from early-stage clinical trials of salinosporamide A in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma patients were presented at the 2011 American Society of Hematology annual meeting.^[12] Further early-stage trials of the drug in a number of different cancers are ongoing.^[13]