Selenium-containing naphthalimides as anticancer agents: Design, synthesis and bioactivity

Selenium analogues (4b-4h, and 4j) of two known sulfur compounds were synthesized and tested their anticancer activities. The selenium compound 4b had comparable activity with its sulfur analogue 4a, while DNA-binding study showed these two compounds had similar interaction with ct-DNA, the Kb was 8.23 and 2.36, respectively. The primary results showed that most compounds had moderate anticancer activities with IC50 values between 10−6 and 10−5 M. Another selenium analogue 4j showed the highest activity with the IC50 values around 5.3 μM against K562 and MCF-7 cell lines. More importantly, the organochalcogen compounds exhibited stronger anticancer activities against K562 cell line than the other cell lines tested.