Study of antitumor effect of selected vanadium and molybdenum organometallic complexes in human leukemic T-cells

Highligths•Cytotoxic effect of non-platinum metal-based compounds was studied.•Apoptotic process, induced by the activation of the caspase 9, was observed.•Upregulation of the tumor-suppressor protein p53 and its form phosphorylated at the serine 15 was observed.

This work describes cytotoxic effect of non-platinum metal-based compounds on the human T-leukemic cells with different p53 status (p53 wild-type MOLT-4 and p53-deficient Jurkat cells). The cytotoxic and apoptosis-inducing effect of the vanadium complex [(η5-C5H5)2V(5-NH2-phen)]OTf (V1) and molybdenum complex [(η3-C3H5)Mo(CO)2(phen)Cl] (Mo1) were studied using flow cytometry, spectrophotometry and Western blotting. We found that the cytotoxic effect of both tested complexes after 24 h is higher against the both examined cell lines than that of cis-platin (cis-DDP). At later investigated time intervals of 48 and 72 h, the cytotoxic effect of the cis-DDP increased but the values of the cytotoxicity of the tested V1 and Mo1 complexes remained unchanged, with the cytotoxicity of V1 comparable to that of cis-DDP. Furthermore we observed that the apoptotic process was induced by the activation of the caspases 9 (intrinsic pathway) and 8 (extrinsic pathway) in cells exposed to evaluated complexes. In case of the p53 wild-type MOLT-4 cells, the expression of the tumor-suppressor protein p53 and its form phosphorylated at the serine 15 increased after both V1 and Mo1 treatment, similar to the effect of cis-DDP.

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