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Carbamate derivatives of colchicine show potent activity towards primary acute lymphoblastic leukemia and primary breast cancer cells—in vitro and ex vivo study
Author(s) -
Urbaniak Alicja,
Jousheghany Fariba,
PiñaOviedo Sergio,
Yuan Youzhong,
MajcherUchańska Urszula,
Klejborowska Greta,
Moorjani Anika,
MonzaviKarbassi Behjatolah,
Huczyński Adam,
Chambers Timothy C.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of biochemical and molecular toxicology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.526
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0461
pISSN - 1095-6670
DOI - 10.1002/jbt.22487
Subject(s) - ex vivo , in vivo , cancer research , leukemia , cancer , in vitro , breast cancer , cancer cell , cell culture , chemistry , biology , medicine , immunology , biochemistry , genetics , microbiology and biotechnology
Colchicine ( COL ) shows strong anticancer activity but due to its toxicity towards normal cells its wider application is limited. To address this issue, a library of 17 novel COL derivatives, namely N ‐carbamates of N ‐deacetyl‐4‐(bromo/chloro/iodo)thiocolchicine, has been tested against two types of primary cancer cells. These included acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and human breast cancer (BC) derived from two different tumor subtypes, ER+ invasive ductal carcinoma grade III (IDCG3) and metastatic carcinoma (MC). Four novel COL derivatives showed higher anti‐proliferative activity than COL (IC 50 = 8.6 nM) towards primary ALL cells in cell viability assays (IC 50 range of 1.1‐6.4 nM), and several were more potent towards primary IDCG3 (IC 50 range of 0.1 to 10.3 nM) or MC (IC 50 range of 2.3‐9.1 nM) compared to COL (IC 50 of 11.1 and 11.7 nM, respectively). In addition, several derivatives were selectively active toward primary breast cancer cells compared to normal breast epithelial cells. The most promising derivatives were subsequently tested against the NCI panel of 60 human cancer cell lines and seven derivatives were more potent than COL against leukemia, non–small‐cell lung, colon, CNS and prostate cancers. Finally, COL and two of the most active derivatives were shown to be effective in killing BC cells when tested ex vivo using fresh human breast tumor explants. The present findings indicate that the select COL derivatives constitute promising lead compounds targeting specific types of cancer.