The P-O-ethyl ester of cAMP has been synthesized, its inhibition of solid and ascites tumors studied, and its pattern of urinary excretion followed. Et-cAMP is more effective than cAMP against solid sarcoma The recognition that altered cAMP levels may be an important biochemical lesion underlying diverse human diseases (1) has opened new avenues of rational drug design (2). Of the great variety of cAMP derivatives and analogs reported over the years (3), phosphotriesters of cAMP (4) offer the combined advantage of metabolic stability and cell penetration. This rationale led Nagyvary et al. (4) to the synthesis of several protected and unprotected (5) cAMP P-O-alkyl esters. The N6-diacetyl derivatives of Me-cAMP and Et-cAMP were found active on Ehrlich ascites carcinoma both in vivo and in vitro (4). It was proposed that the biological activity of these triesters could be linked to their functioning as storage forms of cAMP, which is known to inhibit tumors (6).In the chemical synthesis (4), cAMP was reacted with triisopropyl benzenesulfonyl chloride and the resulting mixed anhydride was subjected to alcoholysis. Although a transesterification leading to a neutral cAMP phosphoamidate was reported to be highly stereoselective for the exo form (7), two diastereomers are possible here. Thus, to establish the exact structure of the biologically active P-O-ethyl ester of cAMP studied in this work, its crystal structure was determined. This paper reports the results of this determination as well as some evidence of the superiority of this neutral ester to exogenous cAMP as a biologically active agent.
MATERIALS AND METHODSCrystallography. Precession photographs of a needle-shaped crystal, 0.4 X 0.04 X 0.04 mm, established that the crystal belonged to the monoclinic space groups P21 (C22) or P21/ m(C2h2). The latter would be inconsistent with the chirality of the molecules and was also disfavored by the statistical distribution of the normalized structure factors. All further measurements were made on a Syntex P1 diffractometer utilizing incident beam monochromatized Mo Ka radiation.Fifteen medium-angle reflections gave refined unit cell dimensions of a = 10.340 (7) A, b = 6.851(4) A, c = 12.464 (7) A, , = 65.95(5)0 and V = 806.2(8) A'. The inclusion of the two water molecules found in the unit cell during refinement yields a calculated density of 1.54 g cm'-for Z = 2. The 1554 independent reflections to a 20 maximum of 500 were collected by standard 0-20 scan techniques. No degradation of standard reflections was observed. Lorenz and polarization corrections were applied, but no absorption correction was made (MA = 2.3 cm-'). Only those 708 reflections for which F02 > 3o-(Fo2) were employed to solve and refine the structure; attempts to include additional reflections to F02 > 1.5a (Fo2) led to unreasonable values for bond distances and angles.The structure was solved using the MULTAN programs