Synthesis and biological evaluation of D-ring fused 1,2,3-thiadiazole dehydroepiandrosterone derivatives as antitumor agents

A series of D-ring fused 1,2,3-thiadiazole DHEA derivatives were synthesized and investigated for their activity against the growth of various tumor cell lines using the sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay. It is amazing that for these compounds, T47D cell line was much more sensitive than other tumor cell lines. The most potent saturated N-heterocyclic derivatives showed similar antitumor effect with the positive control compound ADM (adriamycin) on T47D cells, that was 44–60 folds more potent than the lead compound DHEA. Most compounds with potent antitumor activity displayed low toxicity on normal human fibroblasts (HAF). Especially compound 25 (CH33) showed an IC₅₀ of 0.058 μM on T47D cells and its selectivity index (SI) between HAF and T47D was 364, which was 214 folds better than ADM (SI = 1.7). The apoptosis, colony formation and transwell migration assays of 25 were performed on T47D cell line. The primary mechanism study showed that 25 caused a dose-dependent induction of apoptosis, and induced phosphorylation of EphA2 and EphB3 in T47D cells. The in vivo antitumor effect of 25 was also observed in T47D tumor-bearing mice without obvious toxicity.