Influence of bromoethyl group on biological activity of 5-fluorouracil prodrug: Insights from X-ray crystallography and molecular docking
作者:Xian-Chuan Li、Kuan-Guan Liu、Da-An Qin、Chen-Chen Cheng、Bing-Xiong Chen、Mao-Lin Hu
DOI:10.1016/j.molstruc.2012.05.070
日期:2012.11
To develop alkyl halides for a promising prodrug system, a 5-fluorouracil prodrug containing a bromoethyl group (5-FUBr) was synthesized and its hydrophobicity, cytotoxicity and DNA-bonding ability were investigated in detail. Compare with 5-fluorouracil, 5-FUBr exhibits a great advantage of hydrophobicity and shows significant reduction in toxic side effect. To explore the mechanism of action of 5-FUBr at the molecular level, X-ray crystallography and molecular docking were exploited to make a more detailed analysis of the bromoethyl contribution to the construction of meaningful structure-activity relationship. Details of X-ray crystal structure of 5-FUBr suggest that 5-fluorouracil may be more apt to be released from 5-FUBr. The appearance of the bromoethyl group in 5-FUBr makes a remarkable impact on inhibition of thymidylate synthase (TS), and the impact of subtle structural variation between 5-fluorouracil and 5-FUBr should be taken into account in the process of developing this family of 5-fluorouracil prodrugs. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.