Investigation of the efficacy of Denovo synthesized anthraquinone derivatives in pancreatic cancer cell culture

The incidence of pancreatic cancer worldwide is 459,000. Of these, 432,250 result in death. It ranks 7th in cancer mortality. Pancreatic cancer has a relatively short survival time and a low 5-year survival rate after cancer diagnosis. Also, the incidence rate is increasing 1.5% per year and the survival rate of pancreatic cancer patients is stable. Even when treated with the most active chemotherapy regimens, their survival is not promising. Radiotherapy appears to add little to the treatment of those with locally advanced disease that cannot be removed. Therefore, there is a critical need for new drugs that can more effectively target these tumor cells and reduce the incidence of recurrence. Of these, more effective therapeutic strategies are with immunotherapy being the most promising approach. In recent years, telomerase inhibitors have been used for immunotherapy treatment in pancreatic cancer patients. Studies show that telomerase activity can improve the prognosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma and be a therapeutic target. Anthraquinone derivatives have been used as anticancer agents for half a century. These molecules are important for their ability to interact with DNA. Many studies have shown that natural anthraquinones have a wide range of bioactivities such as anticancer, anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressive, antimicrobial, diuretic, cathartic, laxative, vasodilator, antioxidant and phytoestrogen activities. Phthalocyanines are intensely colored solid molecules with strong chemical, thermal and photo stability due to their aromatic structure and richness in π-electrons. The binding properties of phthalocyanine compounds to telomeric G-Quadruplex DNA is a new research area in cancer therapy. In this study, we demonstrated that two different phthalocyanine derivative Zincphthalocyanine compounds (p–ZnPc and np–ZnPc) containing anthraquinone groups, which were newly synthesized and determined to have high binding energies to G-quadruplex DNA in molecular docking analysis, in pancreatic cancer cell lines (Mia-PaCa-2 and PANC-1) for determination of telomerase inhibitor activities; We aimed to show possible new candidate telomerase inhibitors by investigating the expression determination of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT). Keywords: Pancreatic cancer, Anthraquinone, Phthalocyanine, Telomer, Telomerase inhibitor