New synthetic routes to a series of tetra- and pentacyclic acridines related in structure to marine natural products are reported. The novel water-soluble agent dihydroindolizino[7,6,5-kl]acridinium chloride 14 has inhibitory activity in a panel of non-small-cell lung and breast tumor cell lines exceeding that of m-AMSA. The salt inhibited the release of minicircle products of kDNA confirming that disorganization of topoisomerase II partly underlies the activity of the compound. COMPARE analysis of the NCI mean graph profile of compound 14 at the GI(50) level corroborates this conclusion with Pearson correlation coefficients (>0.6) to clinical agents of the topoisomerase II class: however, this correlation was not seen at the LC(50) level. The inhibitory action of 14 on Saccharomyces cerevisiae transfected with human topoisomerase II isoforms showed a 3-fold selectivity against the IIalpha isoform over the IIbeta isoform. Unlike m-AMSA, 14 is not susceptible to P-glycoprotein-mediated drug efflux and retains activity in lung cells with derived resistance to the topoisomerase II inhibitor etoposide.

A regioselective palladium-catalyzed allylic alkylation cascade forms furo[3,2-c]pyrans from various cyclic β-dicarbonyl bis-nucleophiles and 3,6-dihydro-2H-pyran bis-electrophiles. The combination of allylic carbonate and anomeric siloxy leaving groups in the dihydropyran substrate allows control of the many regiochemical possibilities in this reaction. Annulation proceeds stereoconvergently to give cis-fused furopyrans from either cis- or trans-substituted starting material.

Tikitericin, a novel lanthipeptide was isolated and characterised together with its first total synthesis.