Understanding Anthracyclines: Synthesis of a Focused Library of Doxorubicin/Aclarubicin - Inspired Structures

Doxorubicin is one of the Topoisomerase II inhibitors that are used for the treatment of various types of cancer, including leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. As effective and popular as this drug is, its usage is hugely limited by the cumulative cardiotoxicity it brings along. Conversely, aclarubicin sees little use in the Western world but is not nearly as cardiotoxic. This thesis describes a flexible methodology that allowed for the preparation of mono-, di- and trisaccharide analogues of doxorubicin and aclarubicin. Structural variation in the target compounds has been achieved by swapping and shuffling of the sugar sequence and varying the alkylation pattern on the amine functionality.