Interaction of vinblastine analogues with tubulin

Summary Studies of the interaction between vinblastine-like alkaloids and their receptor, i.e. tubulin, are reported. They shed some light on the structure-activity relationships in this medicinally important series: the configurations at C₁₄ and C₁₆ as well as the presence of the methoxycarbonyl group on C₁₆ seem to play an essential role in the determination of biological activity.This work was supported by CNRS (A.T.P. No 3232).We thank Dr D. Pantaloni for interesting discussions, Drs N. and Y. Langlois for discussions and for supplying synthetic material, and Eli Lilly Laboratories for gifts of vinblastine, vincristine and leurosidine.