Synthesis of portimines reveals the basis of their anti-cancer activity

Marine-derived cyclic imine toxins, portimine A and portimine B, have attracted attention because of their chemical structure and notable anti-cancer therapeutic potential1–4. However, access to large quantities of these toxins is currently not feasible, and the molecular mechanism underlying their potent activity remains unknown until now. To address this, a scalable and concise synthesis of portimines is presented, which benefits from the logic used in the two-phase terpenoid synthesis5,6 along with other tactics such as exploiting ring-chain tautomerization and skeletal reorganization to minimize protecting group chemistry through self-protection. Notably, this total synthesis enabled a structural reassignment of portimine B and an in-depth functional evaluation of portimine A, revealing that it induces apoptosis selectively in human cancer cell lines with high potency and is efficacious in vivo in tumour-clearance models. Finally, practical access to the portimines and their analogues simplified the development of photoaffinity analogues, which were used in chemical proteomic experiments to identify a primary target of portimine A as the 60S ribosomal export protein NMD3.