Abstract (eng)
The nuclear receptors RXRα and PPARγ are according to science important transcription factors in metabolic disease and cancer. Diabetes type II, metabolic syndrome as well as cancer, are in the foreground to widespread diseases. About 60 million people in Europe have diabetes and about 13.1 million cancer-deaths are predicted for 2030. These nuclear recep-tors are involved in Metabolism of lipids and glucose, and some clinical trials report about sig-nificant benefits by using a combined therapy with this RXRα- and PPARγ-Agonists.
Aim of this Diploma work was to identify the corresponding receptor agonists from a set of semi- and fully synthetic neolignan derivatives. Screening experiments were performed in HEK-293 cells using a luciferase- and an EGFP-reporter gene. Therefore RXRα- as well as PPARγ-modulating gene expression was simulated in transfection experiments. A further aim is to yield structure-activity relationships between neolignans and RXRα-/PPARγ-receptors, which will be part of a larger project.
Some novel agonists were identified with the luciferase reporter gene assay. While the fully synthetic derivatives were inactive or selective RXRα-agonists like the derivatives 2284, 2285, 2287 and 2288, some of the semi synthetic derivatives were also identified as dual ag-onists like magnolol, honokiol, the derivatives 752, 753 and 758. Dieugenol, tetrahydrodieuge-nol as well as the neolignan derivatives 754 and 759 were identified as PPARγ-agonists.
The achieved results indicate that diverse neolignan derivatives structures show RXRα-modulating activity, while the propyl- or propylene groups, on both benzene rings, are im-portant for the PPARγ-modulating activity.