Essential oils (EOs) are plant-derived aroma compounds with a wide range of biological activity, but their actions are slow, and they are typically unstable to light or heat, difficult to extract and so on. To find highly potential fungicides derived from natural EOs, a series of essential oil-based β-methoxyacrylate derivatives have been designed and synthesized. The target compounds have been screened for their potential fungicidal activity against eleven species of plant pathogen fungi, including Alternaria alternata, Phomopsis adianticola, Pestalotiopsis theae, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, etc. Compared with intermediates I, the parent essential oils and azoxystrobin, almost all of essential oil-based β-methoxyacrylate derivatives exhibited significantly better fungicidal activity. Further investigation revealed that some compounds showed remarkable inhibitory activities against Pestalotiopsis theae, Phomopsis adianticola, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Magnapothe grisea at different concentrations in contrast to the commercial product azoxystrobin. Compound II-8 exhibited particularly significant fungicidal activity.

A series of novel peptidomimetics bearing dehydroepiandrosterone moiety were designed, synthesized, and evaluated for their inhibition activities against cell proliferation. According to the preliminary studies on inhibitory activities, some of the newly prepared compounds indicated significantly inhibition activities against human hepatoma cancer (HepG2), human lung cancer (A549), human melanoma (A875) cell lines compared with the control 5-fluorouracil. Especially, compounds Ii (IC50 < 14 μM) and Ik (IC50 < 13 μM) exhibited obvious inhibition activities against all tested cell lines. The highly potential compound Ik induced apoptosis in HepG2 cells were analyzed by flow cytometry, and the apoptotic effects of compound Ik were further evaluated using Annexin V-FITC/propidium iodide dual staining assay, which revealed these highly potential compounds induced cell death in HepG2 cells at least partly by apoptosis.

A series of novel peptidomimetics bearing tryptamine moiety were designed, synthesized, and evaluated for their inhibition activities against cell proliferation (HepG2, Huh-7, A875 and BEL-7402/5-FU cell lines).

Background: Using constantly and widely chemistry insecticides has resulted in a selection burden and favored tolerance development in various insect species. Particularly, pyrethroids are the only one which can be used for net impregnation either ITNs or LLIN as yet, however, the excessive use of pyrethroids has led to many cases of insect resistance in worldwide. Therefore, it is urgent to develop novel insecticides fighting against this sort of resistance. Methods: Based on the preliminary studies, we explored a straightforward highly stereoselective method to achieve the novel chiral ester derivatives by using Oppolzer’s 10,2-camphorsultam as chiral controlling reagent. Results: A series of tetrafluorobenzyl alcohol oriented (S)-enantiomeric esters were designed and synthesized by the asymmetric synthesis. All the compounds exhibited moderate yields, and the original synthesized compounds have been evaluated for their potential insecticidal activity against Plutella xylostella compared with those of fenvalerate and D-trans-phenothrin, and some compounds presented excellent insecticidal activities. Conclusion: The bioassay illustrated that some of the compounds exhibit obviously insecticidal activities against Plutella xylostella, especially, the insecticidal activity of compound 5i was as good as commercial fenvalerate and D-trans-phenothrin, which can be used as a lead compound for further optimization.