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We used a pharmacophore hybridization strategy to combine key structural elements of merbarone and etoposide and generated new type II topoisomerase (topoII) poisons. This first set of hybrid topoII poisons shows promising antiproliferative activity on human cancer cells, endorsing their further exploration for anticancer drug discovery.

Combined computational-experimental analyses explain and quantify the spermine-vectorized F14512's boosted potency as a topoII poison. We found that an optimized polyamine moiety boosts drug binding to the topoII/DNA cleavage complex, rather than to the DNA alone. These results provide new structural bases and key reference data for designing new human topoII poisons.

EGFR is an oncogene which codifies for a tyrosine kinase receptor that represents an important target for anticancer therapy. Indeed, several human cancers showed an upregulation of the activity of this protein. The promoter of this gene contains some G-rich domains, thus representing a yet unexplored point of intervention to potentially silence this gene. Here, we explore the conformational equilibria of a 30-nt long sequence located at position −272 (EGFR-272). By merging spectroscopic and electrophoretic analysis performed on the wild-type sequence as well as on a wide panel of related mutants, we were able to prove that in potassium ion containing solution this sequence folds into two main G-quadruplex structures, one parallel and one hybrid. They show comparable thermal stabilities and affinities for the metal ion and, indeed, they are always co-present in solution. The folding process is driven by a hairpin occurring in the domain corresponding to the terminal loop which works as an important stabilizing element for both the identified G-quadruplex arrangements.

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