Salinosporamide A

Salinosporamide A (Marizomib) is a potent proteasome inhibitor being studied as a potential anticancer agent. It entered phase I human clinical trials for the treatment of multiple myeloma, only three years after its discovery in 2003. This marine natural product is produced by the obligate marine bacteria Salinispora tropica and Salinispora arenicola, which are found in ocean sediment. Salinosporamide A belongs to a family of compounds, known collectively as salinosporamides, which possess a densely functionalized γ-lactam-β-lactone bicyclic core. Salinosporamide A (Marizomib) is a potent proteasome inhibitor being studied as a potential anticancer agent. It entered phase I human clinical trials for the treatment of multiple myeloma, only three years after its discovery in 2003. This marine natural product is produced by the obligate marine bacteria Salinispora tropica and Salinispora arenicola, which are found in ocean sediment. Salinosporamide A belongs to a family of compounds, known collectively as salinosporamides, which possess a densely functionalized γ-lactam-β-lactone bicyclic core. 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), 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. 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. Salinosporamide A inhibits proteasome activity by covalently modifying the active site threonine residues of the 20S proteasome.