Abstract
Chemical investigation on the soft coral Sarcophyton sp. collected from the South China Sea yielded three new polyhydroxylated steroids, compounds (1-3), together with seven known ones (4-10). Their structures were established by extensive spectroscopic methods and comparison of their data with those of the related known compounds. All the isolates possessed the 3β,5α,6β-trihydroxylated steroidal nucleus. The cytotoxicities against selected HL-60, HeLa and K562 tumor cell lines and anti-H1N1 (Influenza A virus (IAV)) activities for the isolates were evaluated. Compounds 2, 3 and 5-8 exhibited potent activities against K562 cell lines with IC₅₀ values ranging from 6.4 to 10.3 μM. Compounds 1, 6-8 potently inhibited the growth of HL-60 tumor cell lines, and 6 also showed cytotoxicity towards HeLa cell lines. In addition, preliminary structure-activity relationships for the isolates are discussed. The OAc group at C-11 is proposed to be an important pharmacophore for their cytotoxicities in the 3β,5α,6β-triol steroids. Compounds 4 and 9 exhibited significant anti-H1N1 IAV activity with IC₅₀ values of 19.6 and 36.7 μg/mL, respectively.