Antiproliferative activity of ursolic acid/glycyrrhetinic acid-uracil/thymine hybrids

As pharmacophore hybridization has been used frequently in the discovery of new drugs, ursolic acid/glycyrrhetinic acid-uracil/thymine hybrids have been synthesized and evaluated their antiproliferative activity by the MTT assay. The results displayed that, the hybrids of glycyrrhetinic acid ( 7a – 7b to 10a – 10b ) exhibited slightly better antiproliferative activity than that of ursolic acid hybrids ( 3a – 3b to 6a – 6b ). Two single glycyrrhetinic acid-thymine hybrids ( 8a and 10a ) possessed good antiproliferative activity against tested A549 cell line (IC 50  = 10.7 and 18.3 µM, respectively). And three hybrids ( 3a , 5a , and 10b ) exhibited about 80% inhibitory ratio against tested Hela cell line.