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Some ferrocenyl chalcones as useful candidates for cancer treatment

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Abstract

Although knowledge of cancer management is extensive, mortality is not currently declining in this area. It is therefore important to implement a long-term strategy that would aim to prevent these serious diseases. Ferrocene-related organometallic compounds are promising candidates for design of new drugs since they can exhibit much greater biological activity than their phenyl analogs. In our work, we focused on investigating the cytotoxic and antiproliferative effects of five ferrocenyl derivatives toward selected tumor cell lines. We found that some of these substances significantly reduced Jurkat cell survival and, to a lesser extent, that of the HeLa, MCF7, A549, and MDA cells. Long-term treatment of HeLa cell cultures with these agents resulted in a significant blockade of formation of tumor cell colonies. We found that one of the mechanisms of action of the compounds is likely to display an effect on the redox state of the mitochondria at a final concentration of 10−4 and 10−5 mol l−1. Of the compounds tested, the indanonyl ferrocene derivative (C) was the most effective, especially via glutathione depletion. Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that synthetic substances containing iron have potential antitumor activity.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the grant VEGA 1/0751/12 and VEGA 1/1236/12 and partially supported by the Agency of the Slovak Ministry of Education for the Structural Funds of the EU, under project ITMS: 26220220104 (15%), ITMS: 26220120058 (15%), and ITMS: 26220220152 (15%).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical and Clinical Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Tr. SNP 1, 040 66, Košice, Slovak Republic

    Vašková Janka, Daniel Žatko & Vaško Ladislav

  2. Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Pécs, Rokus u. 2, Pécs, Hungary

    Perjési Pál

  3. Department of Biology, Faculty of Humanities and Natural Science, University of Prešov in Prešov, 17th November Street 1, 081 16, Prešov, Slovak Republic

    Poráčová Janka

  4. Department of Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Tr. SNP 1, 040 66, Košice, Slovak Republic

    Mojžišová Gabriela

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  1. Vašková Janka
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Correspondence to Mojžišová Gabriela.

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Editor: T. Okamoto

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Janka, V., Žatko, D., Ladislav, V. et al. Some ferrocenyl chalcones as useful candidates for cancer treatment. In Vitro Cell.Dev.Biol.-Animal 51, 964–974 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11626-015-9919-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11626-015-9919-6

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