Effect of nitric oxide on the anti-cancer activity of thiosemicarbazone derived from the vanillin

• Grant number: 20/11997-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2021
• End date: December 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Chemistry - Inorganic Chemistry
• Principal Investigator: José Clayston Melo Pereira
• Grantee: Jhonathan Richard Vieira de Oliveira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Química (IQ). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Cancer is disease, which caused around 12% of all human deaths world wide each year. Thiosemicarbazones are compounds of interest in research related to the development of drugs for use in the fight against cancer. Among the most promising thiosemicarbazones we highlight triapine, which showed excellent results in experiments of anticancer activity in vitro. However, this thiosemicarbazone was investigated in more than 30 phase I and II clinical studies with results below expectations. Researchers have suggested that triapine can be inhibited during in vivo treatment due to the cyclo oxidation process forming its corresponding thiadiazole. It was demonstrated, therefore, that the thiadiazole derived from triapine does not show ant proliferative activity of cancer cell sindicating that such chemical process may be related to the low anticancer activity of this thiosemicarcazone in in vivo experiments. Our group has shown that nitric oxide reacts with thiosemicarbazone in the presence of oxygen to form thiadiazoles. In our hypothesis, we believe that the cyclo oxidation process of thiosemicarbazones, which could inhibit their anticancer activity, can occur through interaction with NO in the presence of oxygen in the biological system. Finally, in this project, our objective is to study the effect of nitric oxide on the in vitro antitumor activity of 1-N-cinnamaldehyde-4-N-(dimethyl)-thiosemicarbazone.