New 3'-O-aromatic acyl-5-fluoro-2'-deoxyuridine derivatives as potential anticancer agents

The Anticancer Activity of Indazole Compounds: A Mini Review

The incidence and mortality of cancer continue to grow since the current medical treatments often fail to produce a complete and durable tumor response and ultimately give rise to therapy resistance and tumor relapse. Heterocycles with potential therapeutic values are of great pharmacological importance, and among them, indazole moiety is a privileged structure in medicinal chemistry. Indazole compounds possess potential anticancer activity, and indazole-based agents such as, axitinib, lonidamine and pazopanib have already been employed for cancer therapy, demonstrating indazole compounds as useful templates for the development of novel anticancer agents. The aim of this review is to present the main aspects of exploring anticancer properties, such as the structural modifications, the structure-activity relationship and mechanisms of action, making an effort to highlight the importance and therapeutic potential of the indazole compounds in the present anticancer agents.

Evaluation of Floxuridine Oligonucleotide Conjugates Carrying Potential Enhancers of Cellular Uptake

Conjugation of small molecules such as lipids or receptor ligands to anti-cancer drugs has been used to improve their pharmacological properties. In this work, we studied the biological effects of several small-molecule enhancers into a short oligonucleotide made of five floxuridine units. Specifically, we studied adding cholesterol, palmitic acid, polyethyleneglycol (PEG 1000), folic acid and triantennary N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) as potential enhancers of cellular uptake. As expected, all these molecules increased the internalization efficiency with different degrees depending on the cell line. The conjugates showed antiproliferative activity due to their metabolic activation by nuclease degradation generating floxuridine monophosphate. The cytotoxicity and apoptosis assays showed an increase in the anti-cancer activity of the conjugates related to the floxuridine oligomer, but this effect did not correlate with the internalization results. Palmitic and folic acid conjugates provide the highest antiproliferative activity without having the highest internalization results. On the contrary, cholesterol oligomers that were the best-internalized oligomers had poor antiproliferative activity, even worse than the unmodified floxuridine oligomer. Especially relevant is the effect induced by palmitic and folic acid derivatives generating the most active drugs. These results are of special interest for delivering other therapeutic oligonucleotides.

H-Phosphonate Chemistry in the Synthesis of Electrically Neutral and Charged Antiviral and Anticancer Pronucleotides

In this review a short account of our work on the synthesis and biological activity of electrically neutral and charged anti-HIV and anticancer pronucleotides, presented on the background of the contemporary research in this area, is given.

Down-regulation of tenascin-C inhibits breast cancer cells development by cell growth, migration, and adhesion impairment

Tenascin-C (TNC) is an extracellular matrix (ECM) glycoprotein that plays an important role in cell proliferation, migration, and tumour invasion in various cancers. TNC is one of the main protein overexpressed in breast cancer, indicating a role for this ECM molecule in cancer pathology. In this study we have evaluated the TNC loss-off-function in breast cancer cells. In our approach, we used dsRNA sharing sequence homology with TNC mRNA, called ATN-RNA. We present the data showing the effects of ATN-RNA in MDA-MB-231 cells both in monolayer and three-dimensional culture. Cells treated with ATN-RNA were analyzed for phenotypic alterations in proliferation, migration, adhesion, cell cycle, multi-caspase activation and the involvement in epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) processes. As complementary analysis the oncogenomic portals were used to assess the clinical implication of TNC expression on breast cancer patient's survival, showing the TNC overexpression associated with a poor survival outcome. Our approach applied first in brain tumors and then in breast cancer cell lines reveals that ATN-RNA significantly diminishes the cell proliferation, migration and additionally, reverses the mesenchymal cells phenotype to the epithelial one. Thus, TNC could be considered as the universal target in different types of tumors, where TNC overexpression is associated with poor prognosis.

Synthesis and biological assay of new 2'-deoxyuridine dimers containing a 1,2,3-triazole linker. Part I

We describe a simple method for the synthesis of modified dinucleosides containing pyrimidine nucleoside analogues (2'-deoxyuridine, thymidine and 5-fluoro-2'-deoxyuridine). Six different dimers with a 1,2,3-triazole linkage were obtained by azide-alkyne 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition (click reaction), starting from propargylated 2'-deoxyuridine and 5'-azido-nucleoside derivatives. Their cytotoxic activity was tested in five human cancer cell lines: cervical (HeLa), high grade gliomas (U-118 MG, U-87 MG, T98G), liver (HepG2), and normal human fibroblast cell line (MRC-5) using the sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay. The experiment showed that the obtained dimers with a 1,2,3-triazole moiety were very stable compounds, also in the physiological-like media, and had no anticancer activity.

Crystal structure of (5-fluoro-2,4-dioxo-3,4-dihydropyrimidin-1(2H)-yl)methyl furan-2-carboxylate, C10H7FN2O5

C10H7FN2O5, monoclinic, P21/n (no. 14), a = 8.5781(17) Å, b = 5.3121(11) Å, c = 23.578(5) Å, β = 96.68(3)°, V = 1067.1(4) Å3, Z = 4, R gt(F) = 0.0375, wR ref(F 2) = 0.1138, T = 293(2) K.

Studies directed toward the asialoglycoprotein receptor mediated delivery of 5-fluoro-2'-deoxyuridine for hepatocellular carcinoma

The anticancer nucleoside 5-fluoro 2'-deoxyuridine-5'-phosphate (5-FdU-P) was attached via an amide chain linker to a triantennary GalNAc cluster as a means to deliver the drug to hepatic cells that recognize the amino sugar units.

Synthesis and interaction of sterol-uridine conjugate with DMPC liposomes studied by differential scanning calorimetry

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is a thermoanalytical technique which provides information on the interaction between drugs and models of cell membranes. Studies on the calorimetric behavior of hydrated phospholipids within liposomes are employed to shed light on the changes in the physico-chemical properties when interacting with drugs. In this report, new potential anti-cancer drugs such as uridine and uridine derivatives (acetonide and its succinate), 3β-5α,8α-endoperoxide-cholestan-6-en-3-ol (5,8-epidioxicholesterol) and conjugate (uridine acetonide-epidioxicholesterol succinate) have been synthesized. Steglich esterification method using coupling agents allowed to obtain the uridine acetonide-sterol conjugate. The study on the interaction between the drugs and dimiristoyl-phophatidilcholine (DMPC) liposomes has been conducted by the use of DSC. The analysis of the DSC curves indicated that the uridine and derivatives (acetonide and its succinate) present a very soft interaction with the DMPC liposomes, whereas the 5,8-epidioxicholesterol and the conjugate showed a strong effect on the thermotropic behavior. Our results suggested that the lipophilic character of uridine acetonide-sterol conjugate improves the affinity with the DMPC liposomes.

New antiglioma zwitterionic pronucleotides with an FdUMP framework

We have designed and synthesized new 5-fluoro-2'-deoxyuridine 5'-phosphate pronucleotides which can function as potential agents against the glioblastoma multiforme tumor. Their anti-malignant potency has been tested against T98G, U-118 MG, U-87 MG gliomas, HeLa, and Caco-2 cancer cell lines, using MRC-5 healthy cells as a reference. Five of the sixteen compounds (4c, 4f-i) exhibited significant anticancer potency and high selectivity indices (SI 12-66). It is likely that these zwitterionic pronucleotides may function in a similar manner to zwitterionic phospholipids, by inducing cell membrane charge disorder, making the cell permeable to bioactive agents. The most promising therapeutic pronucleotides 4c, 4f-h, have high intestinal-blood uptake potency (Caco-2 cell line), and may be considered as potential, orally administrated, anticancer drugs.