A study of the antitumor activity of four dibutyltin(IV)-N-arylidene-α-amino acid complexes

This paper reports the activity of four dibutyltin(IV)–N-arylidene-α-amino acid complexes against the National Cancer Institute (NCI) panel of 60 cell lines. The results indicated that three of the organotin complexes (C₁₇H₂₅NO₃Sn, C₁₈H₂₇NO₃Sn and C₂₀H₃₁NO₃Sn) exhibit their highest cytotoxic effect on the NCI-522 (non-small cell lung cancer) cell line. The fourth complex, C₂₁H₂₇NO₃Sn, exhibits its highest cytotoxic activity on the cell line RXF-631L (renal cancer). In general, a low to moderate cellular response was observed for all the organotin complexes, with at least one cell line in each subpanel of cells exhibiting a very low growth inhibition response to all the organotin complexes. The low-responding cell lines included HOP-62 (non-small lung cancer), DLD-1 (colon cancer), SF-539 (CNS cancer), SK-MEL-5 (melanoma), IGROV-1 (ovarian cancer) and RPMI-8226 (leukemia). The results also indicated that the compounds did not exhibit any significant subpanel activity and suggested that the compounds were not active in all the cell lines contained in any subpanel. The low to moderate activity of these compounds across the cell lines was attributed to the presence of nitrogen-bearing ligands which prevented the dissociation of the compound and the subsequent binding to DNA. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.