Furoxans and tocopherol analogs–furoxan hybrids as anticancer agents

We determined the antiproliferative and nitric oxide (NO)-releasing activity of furoxans and tocopherol analogs–furoxan hybrids by tandem Griess/resazurin/sulforhodamin B assays in HeLa, 253J, T24, and HepG2 cancer cells. In addition, to investigate the NO implications in the inhibition of cell growth, cells were pretreated with the NO scavenger hemoglobin and the genotoxic damage was determined. The compounds 1 and 3 emerged as good anticancer agents for bladder cancer treatment. The NO-releasing activity of these compounds appears to be necessary to obtain the antiproliferative effect. Although compound 1 exerted a DNA damage mechanism of action, compound 3 seemed to act in a different way. The low toxicity levels against normal cell line HaCaT point them out as a very promising scaffold for the further design of new anticancer agents. *Florencia Pérez and María Varela contributed equally to the writing of this article. Correspondence to Paola Hernández, PhD, Epigenetics and Genomic Instability, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, Avenida Italia 3318, 11600 Montevideo, Uruguay Tel: +598 2487 1616 x232; fax: +598 2487 5461; e-mails: phernandez@iibce.edu.uy, paohernz@gmail.com Received April 30, 2018 Accepted November 3, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

https://ift.tt/2Ayp3CB