Base-Modified Nucleosides as Chemotherapeutic Agents: Past and Future.

Nucleoside and nucleobase antimetabolites have substantially impacted treatment of cancer and infections. Their close resemblance to natural analogs gives them the power to interfere with a variety of intracellular targets, which on one hand gives them high potency, but on the other hand incurs severe side effects, especially of the chemotherapeutics used against malignancies. Therefore, the development of novel nucleoside analogs with widened therapeutic windows represents an attractive target to synthetic organic and medicinal chemists. This review discusses the current antimetabolite drugs: 5- fluorouracil, 6-mercaptopurine, 6-thioguanine, Cladribine, Vidaza, Decitabine, Emtricitabine, Abacavir, Sorivudine, Clofarabine, Fludarabine, and Nelarabine; gives insight into the nucleoside drug candidates that are being developed; and outlines the approaches to nucleobase modifications that may help discover novel bioactive nucleoside analogs with the mechanism of action focused on termination of DNA synthesis, which is expected to diminish the off-target toxicity in non-proliferating human cells.

Base-modified thymidines capable of terminating DNA synthesis are novel bioactive compounds with activity in cancer cells.

Current FDA-approved chemotherapeutic antimetabolites elicit severe side effects that warrant their improvement; therefore, we designed compounds with mechanisms of action focusing on inhibiting DNA replication rather than targeting multiple pathways. We previously discovered that 5-(α-substituted-2-nitrobenzyloxy)methyluridine-5'-triphosphates were exquisite DNA synthesis terminators; therefore, we synthesized a library of 35 thymidine analogs and evaluated their activity using an MTT cell viability assay of MCF7 breast cancer cells chosen for their vulnerability to these nucleoside derivatives. Compound 3a, having an α-tert-butyl-2-nitro-4-(phenyl)alkynylbenzyloxy group, showed an IC50 of 9±1µM. The compound is more selective for cancer cells than for fibroblast cells compared with 5-fluorouracil. Treatment of MCF7 cells with 3a elicits the DNA damage response as indicated by phosphorylation of γ-H2A. A primer extension assay of the 5'-triphosphate of 3a revealed that 3aTP is more likely to inhibit DNA polymerase than to lead to termination events upon incorporation into the DNA replication fork.