Novel quinoline derivatives carrying nitrones and oxime as nitric oxide donors were prepared and characterized using different spectroscopic techniques. Nitrones can release nitric oxide in larger amounts compared to corresponding oximes. Antiproliferative screening results showed that the 2-benzylthioquinoline nitrones 6e and 6f and the 2-methylthio analogues 6g and 6h exhibited promising antiproliferative activity especially against leukemia and colon cancer cell lines. Compounds 6c, 6e, and 6f exhibited higher potency as anticancer agents compared to doxorubicin, with IC 50 ranging from 0.45 to 0.91 μM. A remarkable overexpression of caspase-3 protein levels was observed in cells treated with the tested compounds. Compound 6e exhibited more pre-G1 apoptosis and cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase than in other phases.These results revealed that the tested compounds can cause programmed cell death through overexpression of caspase 3, which may be attributed to the release of nitric oxide. K E Y W O R D S antiproliferative, apoptosis, caspase 3, nitric oxide, nitrones, oximes 1 | INTRODUCTION Quinoline is a significant nucleus which has attracted the attention of medicinal chemists due to its variable pharmacological activities. Easy functionalization of various ring positions of quinoline makes it an attractive synthetic building block for design and synthesis of new drugs. Additionally, quinolines are considered as an interesting group of compounds, many of which have widespread pharmacologicalactions such as anti-microbial, [1][2][3][4] anti-inflammatory, [5][6][7][8] antitubercular, [9][10][11][12] anti-convulsant, [13] antihypertensive, [14,15] antioxidant, [16][17][18][19] and anticancer [20] activities. Several mechanisms can explain the anticancer effect of quinoline derivatives including: topoisomerase inhibition, [21][22][23] DNA intercalation, [24] protein kinases inhibition, [25][26][27] tubulin polymerase inhibition, [28][29][30][31] and induction of apoptosis. [32,33] Quinoline derivative I exhibited potent anticancer activity against brain cancer cell line U87 with IC 50 of 1.5 nM. [31] Compound II exhibits remarkable anticancer activity against HL60 cancer cell line with IC 50 of 0.68 μM (Figure 1). [33] Incorporation of biologically active moieties into quinoline such as nitrones [34] and oximes [35] may produce biologically active anticancer agents.Compound III showed significant anticancer activity with IC 50 of 31.42 μM against Hep-G 2 cancer cell line (Figure 1). [34] Nitrones are a Arch Pharm Chem Life Sci. 2019;352:e1800270.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ardp

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