The polyamine metabolic pathway represents an attractive and novel target for chemotherapeutic intervention in the treatment of neoplastic disease. Interference with the pathway generally leads to a decrease in cellular growth rate, but in some specific instance results in phenotype- specific cytotoxicity. We have developed a number of synthetic routes that provide a pathway to a wide variety of novel unsymmetrically substituted polyamine analogues, many with unique biochemical activities. Forty-three new analogues have been synthesized to date and examined for their anti proliferative activity with the goal of elucidating their mechanism of action. The preliminary results demonstrate major findings provided by the study of these unique analogues. 1) The production of H2O2 produced as a result of analogue induced polyamine catabolism can play a significant role in the phenotype-specific cytotoxic response to some of the most promising analogues; 2) The cytotoxicity produced by the analogues results through caspase-dependent and - independent programmed cell death pathways; 3) A completely novel mechanisms of activity for polyamine analogue have been discovered, specifically the abilities to produced a G2/M block, alter tubulin polymerization and act as spindle poisons; 4) The study of these unique analogues has led to the discovery that the natural polyamines may have the important function of acting as free radical scavengers in protecting chromatin from reactive oxygen species attack. Based on these exciting preliminary results from the major goals of the studies detained in this application are to expand upon the above finding and to perform detailed structure analyses to aid in the production of more effective anti- neoplastic agents.
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