Design, synthesis, and validation of novel nitrogen-based chalcone analogs against triple negative breast cancer

Abstract

Great strides have been made in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) treatment, which represents 20% of total predicted annual US breast cancer (BC) cases. Despite the development of several therapeutics, TNBC patients have poor overall survival rate, compared to other BC patients, justifying the urgent need to discover new entities for use to control TNBC. Chalcones are important natural products with diverse bioactivities including anticancer effects. This study aimed to design, synthesize and validate novel chalcone leads as potential therapies for TNBC. Fourteen novel chalcone analogs were designed and synthesized comprising alicyclic amines (pyrrolidine, morpholine and piperidine) or nitrogen mustard (Bis-(2-chloroethyl) amine) substituents. Among them, compound 14((E)-3-(4-(Bis(2-chloroethyl) amino) phenyl)-1-(3-methoxyphenyl) prop-2-en-1-one) was identified as the most effective against TNBC and other BC phenotypes, with anti-proliferative IC₅₀ values ranging between 3.94 and 9.22 μM against the TNBC cell lines MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-468, as well as against the estrogen positive MCF-7 cell line. Chalcone 14 effectively suppressed the colony formation capacity of MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-468, and MCF-7 cell lines at 5 and 10 μM treatment concentrations. Furthermore, compound 14 has significantly inhibited cell invasion and migration of MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 BC cell lines. Additionally, compound 14 had significantly promoted apoptosis by upregulating BAX and downregulating Bcl-2 proteins. Compound 14 induced significant cell cycle arrest of TNBC cells at the G2/M phase. It also induced a reversal of Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) by upregulating the epithelial markers E-cadherin and Pan-cadherin and downregulating FAK. Furthermore, it had dramatically diminished new vessel formation (vasculogenesis) in chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) model by 60.20 ± 8.47%. Chalcone 14 inhibited 46.41 ± 0.71% of the TNBC MAD-MB-231 cells growth in a nude mouse orthotopic xenograft model in comparison with vehicle control treated animals. Collectively, this study results propose chalcone 14 as a promising lead molecule for the control of TNBC as well as other breast cancer phenotypes.

Keywords: Analogs; Chalcone; Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT); Methoxy; Nitrogen mustard; Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).