Quantitative Structure−Activity Relationship of Sesquiterpene Lactones as Inhibitors of the Transcription Factor NF-κB

Sesquiterpene lactones (SLs) are the active compounds of a variety of tradionally used medicinal plants from the Asteraceae family. They are known to possess a considerable antiinflammatory activity in different inflammation models. They inhibit the transcription factor NF-κB probably by alkylating cysteine38 in the DNA binding domain of the p65 subunit. Here we investigate a set of 103 different sesquiterpene lactones representing 6 structural groups (44 germacranolides, 16 heliangolides, 22 guaianolides, 9 pseudoguaianolides, 2 hypocretenolides, 10 eudesmanolides) for their NF-κB inhibiting properties and the resulting IC100-values were submitted to a QSAR study. Properties important for the inhibition potency are discussed for the whole data set and for subsets of the different structural classes.