Cytotoxic Colchicine Alkaloids: From Plants to Drugs

Abstract

Plants produce and store many organic compounds like amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and alkaloids, which are usually treated as secondary metabolites. Many alkaloids are biologically active for humans. For thousand years, extracts from plants containing alkaloids had medicinal use as drugs and they owe their powerful effects thanks to presence of alkaloids. Alkaloids have anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, analgesic, local anesthetic, hypnotic, psychotropic, antimitotic, and antitumor activity. Nowadays, alkaloids from plants are still of great interest to organic chemists, pharmacologists, biologists, biochemists, and pharmacists. Plants of Liliaceae family contain colchicine as the main alkaloid, which has cytotoxic activity. Colchicine has limited pharmacological application because of its toxicity, but many derivatives have been synthesized and their cytotoxic activity and tubulin-binding properties have been tested. Many of the synthetic derivatives showed good cytotoxic activity.

Synergistic and Antagonistic Effects of Biogenic Silver Nanoparticles in Combination With Antibiotics Against Some Pathogenic Microbes

“…Antimicrobial activity was noted for J. curcas leaf extracts that contain a component octadecenoic acid methyl ester (Asghar and Choudahry, 2011). The main alkaloid, colchicine, had cytotoxic activity (Kurek, 2018). Such Phenolic and other phytochemicals could be also essential in nanoparticle formation (Ouerghemmi et al, 2017).…”

Synthesis, Characterization, in silico and in vitro Studies of Transition Metal Complexes with Biologically Active Ligand as Antigout Agent Colchicine

“…The binding energy of Ni(II) and Zn(II) it is -8.99 and -8.04, respectively (Figs. [8][9][10][11], which is more than the parent ligand this indicates that both complexes have good interaction with tubulin as beta tubulin inhibitor than the colchicine itself. This drug is antigout and antiproliferative because of its tubulin inhibition property as its complexes are showing more binding energy than the parent ligand which implies the two complexes would give good quality information in the pharmaceutics of colchicine as antigout as well as antimitotic agent.…”

“…[9] Microtubules have been known as highly striking sites of cancer chemotherapy. Colchicine has not recognized as a commercial anticancer drug to date, [10] because of its low therapeutic index due to high toxicity. [11] Metabolism of colchicine take place throughout isoenzyme, cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4); therefore, taking the drug with an agent that inhibits the isoenzyme, and can construct elevated colchicine plasma concentrations, resulting in harsh and sometimes deadly adverse effects.…”

Anticancer potential of alkaloids: a key emphasis to colchicine, vinblastine, vincristine, vindesine, vinorelbine and vincamine

“…Colchicine inhibits assembly by preventing the curved tubulin from adopting a straight structure. Interaction of colchicine and cell lipid membrane results in alterations in properties of compound and membrane [ 80 ]. High and low concentrations of colchicine promote and arrest microtubular polymerization and growth, respectively [ 71 ].…”