Synthesis and anticancer evaluation of new disulfides incorporating naphthalimide moiety.

A series of new disulfides incorporating naphthalimide moiety were designed, synthesized and biologically evaluated against three human cancer cell lines (MCF-7, SMMC-7721 and Hela). Most of target compounds exhibited some degrees of anticancer activities, and some compounds displayed better effects than reference drugs PX-12 and 5-FU against the tested three cancer cells. Especially, compound 7d showed the most potent antiproliferative activity against MCF-7 cell lines with IC₅₀ value of 3.19 μM. Compound 8a displayed prominent anticancer property against SMMC-7721 cell lines with IC₅₀ value of 1.84 μM. Compound 6c possessed the most effective proliferation inhibitory activity against Hela cell lines with IC₅₀ value of 2.14 μM. In addition, cytotoxicity evaluation indicated that most of the compounds had weak cytotoxicity to L929 cell lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]