Innovative platinum derived anticancer agents – risk or opportunity?

Antitumor activity of a Trans-thiosemicarbazone schiff base palladium (II) complex on human gastric adenocarcinoma cells

The development of transition-metal-based antitumor drug candidates increases the metallopharmaceuticals study dramatically. Two trans-thiosemicarbazone-based, Schiff base palladium (Pd) (II) complexes, DMABTSPd (TSPd) and DMABPTSPd (PTSPd), were prepared and characterized as described in our previous study. Here, we investigated whether the two complexes have antitumor effect on human gastric adenocarcinoma cell lines, BGC-823 and SGC-7901, compared with normal human gastric mucosal epithelial cell line, Ges-1. The results show that the Pd complex with the bare amino group (DMABTSPd(TSPd)) can inhibit cell viabilities and induce apoptosis in human gastric carcinoma cells, rather than the Pd complex without the bare amino group (DMABPTSPd (PTSPd)). This occurs via a mitochondrial-related pathway by down-regulating the level of Bcl-2 expression and up-regulating the level of Bid expression. Meanwhile, DMABTSPd (TSPd) suppressed tumor growth via a mitochondrial-related pathway in a nude mouse tumor xenograft model derived from BGC-823 cells. These findings demonstrate that DMABTSPd (TSPd) is worthy of further structural optimization and representing a promising Pd complex for the development of a new antitumor therapeutic agent.

DNA damage induced by novel demethylcantharidin-integrated platinum anticancer complexes

Oxaliplatin is a third generation platinum (Pt) drug with a diaminocyclohexane (DACH) entity, which has recently obtained worldwide approval for the clinical treatment of colon cancer, and apparently operates by a different mechanism of action to the classical cisplatin or carboplatin. Introducing a novel dual mechanism of action is one approach in designing a new platinum-based anticancer agent, whereby an appropriate ligand, such as demethylcantharidin (DMC), is released from the parent compound to exert a cytotoxic effect, in addition to that of the DNA-alkylating function of the platinum moiety. To investigate the likelihood of a novel dual mechanism of anticancer action, demethylcantharidin-integrated Pt complexes: Pt(R,R-DACH)(DMC) with the same Pt-DACH moiety as oxaliplatin, and Pt(NH(3))(2)(DMC) akin to carboplatin; were studied for their ability to induce DNA damage in HCT116 colorectal cancer cells by an alkaline comet assay. The results showed that the DMC ligand released from the novel complexes caused additional DNA lesions when compared with oxaliplatin and carboplatin. The comet assay also revealed that the DNA-damaging behavior of cisplatin is characteristically different; and this study is the first to demonstrate the ability of DMC to induce DNA lesions, thus providing sufficient evidence to explain the superior antiproliferative effect of the novel DMC-integrated complexes.