Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel hydrogen sulfide releasing nicotinic acid derivatives.

Twelve novel hybrids of slowly releasing hydrogen sulfide donor ADT-OH combined with nicotinic acid were synthesized. All of their structures had been confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS spectra. The target compounds were evaluated for their neuroprotective effects on hippocampal neuron HT22 cells against glutamate-induced injury at the concentrations of 1-100µM with MTT assay, and their toxicity on HT22 cells untreated by glutamine at the concentration of 100µM. The active compound was further investigated for its effect on ischemic infarct volume by intraperitoneal injection at 3h after ischemia in mice models of permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion (pMCAO). The results showed that all the compounds significantly protected HT22 cells from glutamate-induced damage at most of the experimental concentrations, and had no or little neurotoxicity on normal HT22 cells at the high concentration. More importantly, compound A6 significantly reduced infarct volume in the pMCAO model. These results suggested that compound A6 may be promising for further evaluation for the intervention of cerebral ischemic injury.

Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel hydrogen sulfide releasing glycyrrhetic acid derivatives.

A series of hybrids, which are composed of glycyrrhetic acid (GA) and slowly hydrogen sulfide-releasing donor ADT-OH, were designed and synthesized to develop anticancer and anti-inflammatory agents. Most of the compounds, whose inhibitory rates were comparable to or higher than those of GA and aspirin, respectively, significantly inhibited xylene-induced ear edema in mice. Especially, compound V4 exhibited the most potent inhibitory rate of 60.7%. Furthermore, preliminary structure-activity relationship studies demonstrated that 3-substituted GA derivatives had stronger anti-inflammatory activities than the corresponding 3-unsubstituted GA derivatives. In addition, anti-proliferative activities of compounds V1-9 were evaluated in three different human cancer cell lines. Compound V4 showed the most high potency against all three tumor cell lines with IC50 values ranging from 10.01 µM in Hep G2 cells to 17.8 µM in MDA-MB-231 cells, which were superior to positive GA.

Electrochemical Investigation of Coenzyme Q10 on Silver Electrode in Ethanol Aqueous Solution and Its Determination Using Differential Pulse Voltammetry.

The electrochemistry reduction of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) on silver electrodes has been investigated in mixed solvent containing 95 vol. % ethanol and 5 vol. % water. A combination of cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is employed to explore the mechanism of redox processes of CoQ10 in the presence and absence of oxygen, respectively. It has been proved that the redox reaction of CoQ10 is highly dependent on the oxygen in the solution compared with that of CoQ0, which may be attributed to the isoprenoid side chain effect of CoQ10 Moreover, the effects of experimental variables such as electrolyte component, pH, temperature, and sonication time on the amperometric and potentiometric responses of CoQ10 are presented. The differential pulse voltammetry method has been developed for the quantification of the CoQ10 in the complex samples. Under the optimum conditions, the method is linear over the concentration range of 1.00 × 10(-7) to 1.00 × 10(-3) mol/L (8.63 × 10(-2) to 8.63 × 10(2) mg/kg). The limit of detection (3σ/k) is 3.33 × 10(-8) mol/L (2.88 × 10(-2) mg/kg). The recoveries of the spiked samples are between 91% and 108%. The presented method can be applied to the analysis of CoQ10 in real samples without any pretreatment.