Design and Synthesis of Novel Xyloketal Derivatives and Their Protective Activities against H2O2-Induced HUVEC Injury

In this work, we designed and synthesized a series of amide derivatives (1-13), benzoxazine derivatives (16-28) and amino derivatives (29-30) from xyloketal B. All 28 new derivatives and seven known compounds (14, 15, 31-35) were evaluated for their protection against H2O2-induced HUVEC injury. 23 and 24 exhibited more potential protective activities than other derivatives; and the EC50 values of them and the leading compound 31 (xyloketal B) were 5.10, 3.59 and 15.97 μM, respectively. Meanwhile, a comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA) was constructed to explain the structural activity relationship of these xyloketal derivatives. This 3D QSAR model from CoMSIA suggested that the derived model exhibited good predictive ability in the external test-set validation. Derivative 24 fit well with the COMSIA map, therefore it possessed the highest activity of all compounds. Compounds 23, 24 and 31 (xyloketal B) were further to examine in the JC-1 mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) assay of HUVECs using flow cytometry (FCM). The result indicated that 23 and 24 significantly inhibited H2O2-induced decrease of the cell mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm) at 25 μM. Collectively, the protective effects of xyloketals on H2O2-induced endothelial cells may be generated from oxidation action by restraining ROS and reducing the MMP.