Comparative investigation into the anticancer activity of analogs of marine coelenterazine and coelenteramine

Cancer is still one of the most challenging diseases to treat, making the pursuit for novel molecules with potential anticancer activity an important research topic. Herein, we have performed a comparative investigation into the anticancer activity of analogs of marine coelenterazine and coelenteramine. The former is a well-known bioluminescent substrate, while the latter is a metabolic product of the resulting bioluminescent reaction. While both types of analogs showed anticancer activity toward lung and gastric cancer cell lines, we have obtained data that highlight relevant differences between the activity of these two types of compounds. More specifically, we observed relevant differences in structure-activity relationships between these types of compounds. Also, coelenteramine analogs showed time-dependent activity, while coelenterazine-based compounds usually present time-independent activity. Coelenterazine analogs also appear to be relatively safer toward noncancer cells than coelenteramine analogs. There was also seen a correlation between the activity of the coelenterazine-based compounds and their light-emission properties. Thus, these results further indicate the potential of the marine coelenterazine chemi-/bioluminescent system as a source of new molecules with anticancer activity, while providing more insight into their modes of action.