Synthetic lethality is a successful strategy employed to develop selective chemotherapeutics against cancer cells. Inactivation of RAD52 is synthetically lethal to homologous recombination (HR) deficient cancer cell lines. Replication protein A (RPA) recruits RAD52 to repair sites, and the formation of this protein-protein complex is critical for RAD52 activity. To discover small molecules that inhibit the RPA:RAD52 protein-protein interaction (PPI), we screened chemical libraries with our newly developed Fluorescence-based protein-protein Interaction Assay (FluorIA). Eleven compounds were identified, including FDA-approved drugs (quinacrine, mitoxantrone, and doxorubicin). The FluorIA was used to rank the compounds by their ability to inhibit the RPA:RAD52 PPI and showed mitoxantrone and doxorubicin to be the most effective. Initial studies using the three FDA-approved drugs showed selective killing of BRCA1-mutated breast cancer cells (HCC1937), BRCA2-mutated ovarian cancer cells (PE01), and BRCA1-mutated ovarian cancer cells (UWB1.289). It was noteworthy that selective killing was seen in cells known to be resistant to PARP inhibitors (HCC1937 and UWB1 SYr13). A cell-based double-strand break (DSB) repair assay indicated that mitoxantrone significantly suppressed RAD52-dependent single-strand annealing (SSA) and mitoxantrone treatment disrupted the RPA:RAD52 PPI in cells. Furthermore, mitoxantrone reduced radiation-induced foci-formation of RAD52 with no significant activity against RAD51 foci formation. The results indicate that the RPA:RAD52 PPI could be a therapeutic target for HR-deficient cancers. These data also suggest that RAD52 is one of the targets of mitoxantrone and related compounds.
A new class of imidazo[2,1-b]thiazole chalcone derivatives were synthesized and evaluated for their anticancer activity. These chalcone derivatives show promising activity, with log GI(50) values ranging from -7.51 to -4.00. The detailed biological aspects of these derivatives toward the MCF-7 cell line were studied. Interestingly, these chalcone derivatives induced G(0)/G(1)-phase cell-cycle arrest, down-regulation of G(1)-phase cell-cycle regulatory proteins such as cyclin D1 and cyclin E1, and up-regulation of CDK4. Moreover, these compounds elicit the characteristic features of apoptosis such as enhancement in the levels of p53, p21, and p27, suppression of NF-κB, and up-regulation of caspase-9. One of these chalcone derivatives, 3 d, is potentially well suited for detailed biological studies, either alone or in combination with existing therapies.
Development of small molecule compounds that target several cancer drivers has shown great therapeutic potential. Here, we developed a new generation of highly potent thienopyranone (TP)based inhibitors for the BET bromodomains (BDs) of the transcriptional regulator BRD4 that have the ability to simultaneously bind to phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K) and/or cyclin-dependent kinases 4/6 (CDK4/6). Analysis of the crystal structures of the complexes, NMR titration experiments and ic 50 measurements reveal the molecular basis underlying the inhibitory effects and selectivity of these compounds toward BDs of BRD4. The inhibitors show robust cytotoxic effects in multiple cancer cell lines and induce cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis. We further demonstrate that concurrent disruption of the acetyllysine binding function of BRD4 and the kinase activities of PI3K and CDK4/6 by the TP inhibitor improves efficacy in several cancer models. Together, these findings provide further compelling evidence that these multi-action inhibitors are efficacious and more potent than single inhibitory chemotypes.
A new series of tetrazole based isoxazolines (4a-l) was synthesized and evaluated for their anticancer potential against two cancer cell lines. All these compounds exhibited profound cytotoxicity with IC 50 values ranging from 1.22 to 3.62 mM and compounds 4h, 4i showed prominent anticancer efficacy with IC 50 values of 1.51, 1.49 mM in A549 and 2.83, 2.40 mM in MDA-MB-231 cell lines. Further, these compounds (4h, 4i) induced apoptotic cell death by inhibition of tubulin polymerization leading to cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase of the cell cycle followed by caspase-3 activity. Moreover, the level of tubulin inhibition by these compounds was examined by in vitro HTS tubulin polymerization assay. Docking of compound 4h and 4i to the active site of tubulin revealed that the trimethoxy ring of the compounds occupies the colchicine binding site of tubulin, whereas the isoxazoline moiety moves towards the interface of a-b tubulin and involves a series of hydrogen bonds with aTyr224 and aSer178.
Glioma amplified sequence 41(GAS41) is a potent transcription factor that play a crucial role in cell proliferation and survival. In glioblastoma, the expression of GAS41 at both transcriptional and post transcriptional level needs to be tightly maintained in response to cellular signals. Micro RNAs (miRNA) are small non coding RNA that act as important regulators for modulating the expression of various target genes. Studies have shown that several miRNAs play role in the post-transcriptional regulation of GAS41. Here we identified GAS41 as a novel target for endogenous miR-203 and demonstrate an inverse correlation of miR-203 expression with GAS41 in glioma cell lines (HNGC2 and U87). Over expression of miR-203 negatively regulates GAS41 expression in U87 and HNGC2 cell lines. Moreover, miR-203 restrained miR-10b action by suppressing GAS41. GAS41 is essential for repressing p53 in tumor suppressor pathway during cell proliferation. Enforced expression of GAS41 produced contradictory effect on miR-203 but was able to enhance p53 tumor suppressor pathway associated protein. It was also found that miR-203 maintains the stability of p53 as knock down of p53 expression using siRNA resulted in down regulation of pri-miR and mature miR-203 expression. Conversely reconstitution of miR-203 expression induced apoptosis and inhibited migratory property of glioma cells. Taken together, we show that miR-203 is a key negative regulator of GAS41 and acts as tumor suppressor microRNA in glioma.
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