Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of antitumor platinum(II) agents conjugated with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug species

As one of the key features of tumor, inflammation attracts much attention of many researchers for antitumor study, in which non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have been widely investigated in anti-inflammatory treatments in cancers. Herein, we report a series of novel platinum(II) complexes derived from conjugation of several NSAIDs derivatives with two antitumor platinum(II) agents. The antitumor inhibitory effects of the synthesized compounds on a number of cancer cell lines were estimated. By taking the advantage of two bioactive moieties, these compounds exhibited stronger antitumor activity than their parent platinum agents, and some appeared to have capability of overcoming cisplatin resistance. Among them, IA-1 showed the best cytotoxicity and even exhibited stronger antitumor activity than cisplatin. Further research indicated that IA-1 induced significant DNA damage and ROS generation, accompanied by high cellular platinum accumulation, resulting in a much higher apoptosis rate than cisplatin in A2780 cells. Moreover, IA-1 was found to inhibit metastasis and invasion of A2780 cells by suppressing the COX-2/JAK2/STAT3 axis. All these results revealed that introduction of NSAIDs species efficiently sensitized cancer cells to the synthetic compounds, proving that NSAIDs can enhance the activity of the platinum(II) agents via inhibiting inflammation in cancer cells.