D-Amino Acid Position Influences the Anticancer Activity of Galaxamide Analogs: An Apoptotic Mechanism Study

Galaxamide, an extract from Galaxaura filamentosa, is a cyclic pentapeptide containing five L-leucines. Due to the particular cyclic structure and the excellent anticancer activity, synthesis of Galaxamide and its analogs and their subsequent bio-applications have attracted great attention. In the present work, we synthesized six Galaxamide analogs by replacing one of the L-leucines with phenylalanine and varying the D-amino acid position. The anticancer effect of the synthesized Galaxamide analogs was tested against four in vitro human cancer cell lines, human hepatocellular cells (HepG(2)), human breast cancer cell (MCF-7), human breast adenocarcinoma cells (MDA-MB-435) and a human cervical carcinoma cell line (Hela). Results showed that Galaxamide analogs with different D-amino acid positions displayed distinct anticancer potential. The Galaxamide analog containing D-amino acid at position 5 (Analog-6) presented the strongest anticancer activity. The mechanism study revealed that Analog-6 could cause the early apoptosis of HepG(2) cells by inhibiting their growth in the sub-G1 stage of the cell cycle and induce the chromatin condensation and fragmentation, which can be seen as 68% of HepG(2) cells inhibited in the sub-G1 stage. Moreover, a mitochondria-mediated pathway was found to be involved in the apoptotic process of Analog-6 on HepG(2) cells.