- Cichewicz, Robert H;
- Clifford, Laura J;
- Lassen, Peter R;
- Cao, Xiaolin;
- Freedman, Teresa B;
- Nafie, Laurence A;
- Deschamps, Joshua D;
- Kenyon, Victor A;
- Flanary, Jocelyn R;
- Holman, Theodore R;
- Crews, Phillip
Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry-guided isolation of extracts from Didiscus aceratus led to the discovery of several new derivatives of the bioactive bisabolene-type sponge metabolite (S)-(+)-curcuphenol (1). The compounds obtained by this method included a mixture of known (2) and new (3) dihydroxylated analogs as well as a novel family of dimeric derivatives, dicurcuphenols A-E (4-8), and dicurcuphenol ether F (9). Dimers 4-9 were also subsequently obtained through a hemisynthetic method in which 1 was incubated with the enzyme laccase. Atropisomeric dimers 5 and 6 were subjected to vibrational circular dichroism analysis thereby establishing their absolute biaryl axial chirality as P and M, respectively. In contrast to 1, metabolites 2-9 exhibited weak or no cytotoxic or lipoxygenase inhibitory effects.