New Disubstituted Quindoline Derivatives Inhibiting Burkitt’s Lymphoma Cell Proliferation by Impeding c-MYC Transcription

5 years ago

New Disubstituted Quindoline Derivatives Inhibiting Burkitt’s Lymphoma Cell Proliferation by Impeding c-MYC Transcription

Zeng Li, Li-Peng Zan, Gang Du, Jia-Heng Tan, Jin-Hui He, Ai-Chun Chen, Su-Mei Huang, Lian-Quan Gu, Hui-Yun Liu, Yao-Hao Xu, Shi-Ke Wang, Qi-Kun Yin, Ding Li, Zhi-Shu Huang, Tian-Miao Ou

The c-MYC oncogene is overactivated during Burkitt’s lymphoma pathogenesis. Targeting c-MYC to inhibit its transcriptional activity has emerged as an effective anticancer strategy. We synthesized four series of disubstituted quindoline derivatives by introducing the second cationic amino side chain and 5-N-methyl group based on a previous study of SYUIQ-5 (1) as c-MYC promoter G-quadruplex ligands. The in vitro evaluations showed that all new compounds exhibited higher stabilities and binding affinities, and most of them had better selectivity (over duplex DNA) for the c-MYC G-quadruplex compared to 1. Moreover, the new ligands prevented NM23-H2, a transcription factor, from effectively binding to the c-MYC G-quadruplex. Further studies showed that the selected ligand, 7a4, down-regulated c-MYC transcription by targeting promoter G-quadruplex and disrupting the NM23-H2/c-MYC interaction in RAJI cells. 7a4 could inhibit Burkitt’s lymphoma cell proliferation through cell cycle arrest and apoptosis and suppress tumor growth in a human Burkitt’s lymphoma xenograft.

Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jmedchem.7b00099

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.7b00099