M. Antoszczak et al. / Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 24 (2014) 1724–1729
1725
in various cell phenotypes in the low micromolar range, providing
an excellent starting point for further drug discovery optimisation.
In addition, tests of SAL and its derivatives have clearly proven that
some of these compounds have a high antiproliferative effect
against normal and drug resistant cancer cells. These results indi-
cate that the biological effects of SAL derivatives are diverse on dif-
ferent bacterial or cancer cell lines and are strongly dependent on
chemical nature of O-acyl, amide or ester substituent.11–14
The main aim of this Letter is evaluation of anticancer and anti-
microbial activity of new derivatives of SAL. Therefore, a series of
new SAL amides was synthesized, characterized by X-ray and spec-
troscopic methods and tested against their antiproliferative and
antibacterial activity. Moreover, as the biological activity of the
new SAL derivatives is closely related to their ability to make com-
plexes with monovalent and divalent metals, it was tested using
the electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (ESI MS).
In the present study, the antiproliferative effect of eleven SAL
amides (1–11) was tested in vitro using human promyelocytic leu-
kemia (HL-60) and its vincristine-resistant subline (HL-60/vinc),
human colon adenocarcinoma cell line (LoVo) and doxorubicin
resistant subline (LoVo/DX), and normal murine embryonic
fibroblast cell line (Balb 3T3). Multi-drug chemoresistance (MDR)
remains one of the most common reasons for failure of chemother-
apy. The membrane transporter protein belonging to the ABC
transporters family has been shown in vitro to effectively reduce
the intracellular concentration of several anticancer chemothera-
peutic agents such as doxorubicin. On the other hand, it is known
that cancer stem cells may act as master regulators during the pro-
cess of chemoresistance acquisition and are characterized by MDR
phenotype.15,16
43–88% (Scheme 1). The SAL dimers (9–11) were obtained in the
moderate yields of about 30% (Scheme 1). The purity and structures
of compounds 1–11 were determined on the basis of elemental
analysis, FT-IR and NMR methods. The 1H and 13C NMR signals were
assigned using one- and two-dimensional (COSY, HETCOR, HMBC
and NOESY) spectra. The exemplary NMR spectra are included in
the Supplementary material (Figs. S1–S4). The analytical signals
in the 1H and 13C NMR spectra and the position of the amide I band
in the FT-IR spectra of compounds 1–11, are collected in Table S1.
Detailed structural analysis of the biologically active com-
pounds is very important for better understanding of their antican-
cer and antimicrobial properties for structure–activity relationship
analysis (SAR), and related investigation. Therefore, one exemplary
compound of the studied series of derivatives that is p-fluor-
obenzylamide (6) was characterized by single crystal X-ray diffrac-
tion method. The single crystals of 6 were grown by crystallisation
in acetonitrile and their structure was determined using X-ray
crystallographic technique (Fig. 1). The crystallographic data and
structure refinement of compound 6 are summarized in Table S2
(Supplementary material).
The pseudo-cyclic conformation of 6 is stabilised by four N1–
Hꢀ ꢀ ꢀO10, O10–Hꢀ ꢀ ꢀO6, O9–Hꢀ ꢀ ꢀO7 and O8–Hꢀ ꢀ ꢀO7 weak intramo-
lecular hydrogen bonds showed in Figure 1, and the parameters
of this compound are collected in Table S3. The six-membered
rings of 6 exhibit the typical chair conformation. The intermolecu-
lar O8–Hꢀ ꢀ ꢀO1i hydrogen bond between the terminal hydroxyl
group (O8–H) of one molecule and the carbonyl atom of amide
group of the neighbouring molecule, together with the van der
Waals forces, stabilise the arrangement of 6 molecules in the crys-
tal (Fig. S5, Supplementary data). The bond lengths and angles
characterizing the geometry of the molecule are presented as Sup-
plementary material (Table S4). The absolute configuration of 6 is
unchanged and is the same as determined previously for salinomy-
cin, its amides and benzotriazole ester.12–14,18,19
The presence of the pseudo-cyclic structure of salinomycin
amides confirmed by X-ray is facilitates the formation of the
lipid-soluble pseudo-cyclic complexes of these compounds with
the metal cations. Since the biological activity of the polyether
antibiotics and its derivatives strongly depends on their ionopho-
retic properties, the ability of the new SAL derivatives to form com-
plexes with monovalent cations such as Li+, Na+, K+, Rb+, Cs+ and
divalent cations such as Mg2+, Ca2+, Sr2+, Ba2+ was studied by us
using ESI MS technique. The ESI MS spectra of the mixtures of
respective SAL amides with the monovalent and divalent metal
perchlorates (Fig. S6-S10) demonstrate that the amides (1–4, 6–
8) form exclusively 1:1 complexes with both types of metal
cations. Only the amide with the crown moiety (5) is able to form
different complexes with divalent cations (M) that is the (5+M)2+
and (5+MClO4)+ (Fig. S9). The last type of complexes has been pre-
viously observed for different monensin derivatives.12,13 Addition-
ally, dimers of SAL (9–11) are able to form complexes with
monovalent cations in 1:1 and 1:2 stoichiometry (Fig. S10).
In contrast to unmodified salinomycin (SAL), which forms com-
plexes of 1:1 stoichiometry only with monovalent cations, espe-
cially Na+ and K+, salinomycin amides are able to form complexes
with both monovalent and divalent metal cations and of different
stoichiometries.
Taking into account this phenomenon, we decided to study the
antiproliferative activity of salinomycin derivatives on drug resis-
tant cells, expressing various transporters (e.g., p-glycoprotein)
and their parent cell lines to observe not only the antiproliferative
activity against cancer cells, but also the possibility to break the
barrier of chemoresistance.
Antimicrobial activity of compounds 1–11 was also tested
in vitro on Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and fungi,
as well as against a series of clinical isolates of Staphylococcus. To
investigate the effect of different substitutions of the carboxylic
group of SAL on its bioactivity, eight new amide derivatives (1–
8) and three dimers (9–11) of SAL were synthesized using the
procedure developed previously by our group.12 To facilitate the
structural activity relationship analysis (SAR) we chose salinomy-
cin amides with different substituents such as: unsaturated alkyl
chain (propargylamine, 1), alkyl chains containing oxygen atoms
(2-(2-aminoethoxy)ethanol, 3) biogenic amines like cysteamine,
(2), putrescine (4), histamine (7), dopamine (8), containing fluori-
nated aromatic ring (4-fluorobenzylamine, 6) and crown ether
(2-aminomethyl-15-crown-5, 5). It is generally believed that di-
mers of biologically active compounds, such as antibiotics, can
show enhanced biological activity relative to that of the single li-
gand. Thus, the symmetrical dimeric SAL ligands, in which two
SAL molecules are linked by different spacer units (1,4-butanedi-
amine 9; p-phenylenediamine 10; 4,40-diaminobiphenyl, 11) were
also prepared to check the effects of linker length and its flexibility
on the biological activity of SAL.
Salinomycin sodium salt was isolated from veterinary
premix–SACOXÒ. Amide derivatives of salinomycin (1–11) were
obtained in the reaction between salinomycin acid (SAL) and
amines with addition of DCC (N,N0-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide) and
HOBt (1-hydroxybenzotriazole) following the procedures de-
scribed previously.12
All SAL amides can be easily isolated in pure form following the
purification by dry vacuum column chromatography.17 This
method was efficient and gave amides 1–8 in high yields of up to
The reason why SAL and its derivatives exhibit biological effects
is their ability to form lipid-soluble pseudo-cyclic complexes with
metal cations and transport them trough cell and mitochondrial
membranes. Derivatives of SAL with modified carboxylic groups
like amides can transport cations via an electrogenic mechanism.
The ESI MS measurement show the ability of SAL amides to form
complexes with monovalent and divalent cation, therefore the
biological activity of these compounds is confirmed also by their
ionophoretic properties.