Synthesis of novel ellipticine analogues and their inhibition of Moloney leukaemia reverse transcriptase

Two new ellipticine analogues were synthetized as potential non nucleoside inhibitors of reverse transcriptase and were tested on Moloney leukaemia virus reverse transcriptase in vitro. Both derivatives (9a,b) showed considerable inhibitory effect; ID50 was found to be in the range of 2.8 to 4.5 × 10−5 M.