α-Hydroxylactams as Efficient Entries to Diversely Functionalized Ferrociphenols: Synthesis and Antiproliferative Activity Studies.

Abstract

The [ferrocene-ene-phenol] motif has been identified as the pharmacophore responsible for the anticancer activity of the family of ferrocene-based molecules coined ferrocifens, owing to its unique redox properties. The addition of imide entities to the historical ferrociphenol scaffold tremendously enhanced the cytotoxic activity of a large panel of cancer cell cultures and preliminary studies showed that the reduction of one of the carbonyl groups of the imide groups to the corresponding α-hydroxylactams only slightly affected the antiproliferative activity. As a continuation to these studies, we took advantage of the facile conversion of α-hydroxylactams to highly electrophilic N-acyliminium ions to graft various substituents to the imide motif of phthalimido ferrocidiphenol. Cell viability studies showed that the newly synthesized compounds showed diverse cytotoxic activities on two breast cancer cell lines, while only one compound was significantly less active on the non-tumorigenic cell line hTERT-RPE1.

• Authors: Pascal Pigeon, Marie Gaschard, Mohamed Othman, Michèle Salmain, Gérard Jaouen
• Journal: Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) (Molecules) Vol. 27 Issue 14 (Jul 16 2022) ISSN: 1420-3049 [Electronic] Switzerland
• PMID: 35889422 (Publication Type: Journal Article)

Chemical References

• Antineoplastic Agents
• Ferrous Compounds
• Imides
• Metallocenes
• ferrociphenol

Topics

• Antineoplastic Agents (pharmacology)
• Cell Line, Tumor
• Cell Proliferation
• Drug Screening Assays, Antitumor
• Ferrous Compounds (pharmacology)
• Humans
• Imides (pharmacology)
• Metallocenes (pharmacology)
• Molecular Structure
• Structure-Activity Relationship