SYNTHETIC STUDY OF Pc-2, AN ACTIVE COMPOUND FROM INDONESIAN RED BETEL LEAF

PC-2 is one of the active compounds isolated from Indonesian red betel leaf. The structure of the compound is named 2-allyl-4-(1'-hydroxy-1'-(3",4",5"-trimethoxyphenyl)propan-2'-yl)-3,5-dimethoxycyclohexa-3,5-dienone and included in the neolignan’s structure category. This compound was reported to have very good biological activity in giving antiproliferative effects on human breast (T47D) cells. From 2.12 g of its leaf methanolic extract, only 12.1 mg of Pc-2 was collected. This amount is too small to do more studies about its biological activities. The synthetic work should be applied to get a sufficient amount. This paper is aimed to explain the synthetic study and design of the Pc2 compound. The first approach is by involving the aldol reaction in the synthetic pathway through the disconnection approach. The result showed that this attempt did not work very well. The second approach is to design the new synthetic pathway by using the synthia Organic Retrosynthesis Software by Merck. This software gave a reasonable result to be tried. The result proposed the use of the Suzuki coupling reaction for the new synthetic pathway of Pc-2.