Effect of methionine and glucosamine conjugation on the anticancer activity of aromatic dinitrobenzamide mustards

Certain nutrients viz ., glucose and methionine are consumed more by cancer cells. Hence, an anticancer agent conjugated to them may render more toxicity in cancer cells due to higher uptake. To probe this effect, methionine and glucosamine were conjugated to a series of well-known aromatic dinitrobenzamide mustards. The in vitro cytotoxicity studies performed to probe the effect of such conjugation showed that the conjugation of methionine and glucosamine to one of the dinitrobenzamide mustard led to more toxicity selectively in human breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7) cell lines. However, effect of functionalization cannot be generalized. Hypoxia based studies showed that IC 50 value did not show much change from normoxic condition which is encouraging as many drugs deactivate in hypoxia. Among the glucosamine and methionine conjugated dinitrobenzamide mustards, the methionine conjugated aromatic dinitrobenzamide mustard of 2-chlorobenzoic acid is the most effective one. It acts by inducing apoptosis through G2/M phase arrest and encouragingly, is much less toxic to nontumorigenic human embryonic kidney (HEK-293T) and mouse embryonic fibroblast (NIH 3T3) cell lines in vitro . Graphical Abstract In vitro studies show that conjugation of methionine and glucosamine to certain dinitrobenzamide mustards may enhance selectivity and increase toxicity against breast adenocarcinoma as compared to nontumorigenic HEK-293T and mouse fibroblast NIH 3T3.