Similar structure, same effect, different mechanism: The alkaloids nonylprodigiosin (1) and roseophilin (2) share several structural motifs and are both highly cytotoxic. While the former induces effective strand cleavage of supercoiled DNA in the presence of CuII, the latter is totally inactive. A structure–activity profile for this class of pyrrole alkaloids has been established by testing various analogues of these lead compounds.
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Fürstner et al. (2001) studied this question.