Synthesis and characterization of putrescine-sulfur analogue/ Adzly H. Sahabudin, Fiona How Ni Foong and Radiah Abdul Ghani

Cancer is a disease which has high motility rate worldwide. The current treatment has a high potential to kill cancer cells, however it is lacking of specificity and therefore cause the side effects in normal cells. The alternate pathway has been explored including targeting to cancer cells via polyamine transport system (PTS). The PTS activity is highly upregulated in cancer cells compared to normal cells. In this study, one of the polyamines called putrescine was being exploited to be a vector for sulphur. This putrescinesulphur analogues were synthesized using two different methods. The synthesized product was later characterized using various physicochemical techniques such as gas-chromatography and Fourier transformed-infrared spectroscopy for structural determination. Several putrescine-sulphur analogues was succesfully synthesis with the expected structure

Synthesize and characterization of putrescine containing sulphur

Compounds containing sulphur such as organosulphur compounds are well known for their anticancer properties. Addition of sulphur in polyamine is expected to improve the specificity due to the transport to the targeted cells efficiently via polyamine transport system added with the anticancer properties possess by the sulphur donor atom. Putrescine with a polyamine moiety acted as cell delivery vector was synthesized to incorporate sulphur into the structure. The synthesized product was later characterized using various physicochemical techniques for structural determination

Comparison between cold temperature (≤ 4°C) and room temperature (≈25°C) mediated synthesis for putrescine-sulphur compound

Despite most anticancer drugs possess potent cell killing activity in vitro studies; the selective delivery of drugs to cancer cells is thus far becomes a major challenge to oncology. The non-specific actions of drugs on healthy cells cause many restrictions in clinical use due to their systemic toxicity. In respond to this matter, specific targeting of anticancer drugs towards cancer cells can be achieved by attaching them to a molecule that is transported into cancer cells via a selective transport system. Carbon disulphides were attached to a polyamine to reduce the effects of cancer cells as sulphurs were known for its anti-cancer properties. For the synthesis, two methods were used. The first method involved the synthesis done in a cold environment while the other in a room temperature environment. The temperature differences had shown to influence the yield as well as the chemical structure of the drug. The effect could also be seen on the amount of solvent used during the process. For the room temperature mediated synthesis, the formation of solid compounds produce was higher and faster as compared to the cold mediated synthesis. Repetition of both methods showed that it was dependable as it produced the same compounds based on the Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy results. In comparison, the room temp mediated synthesis was more efficient as it produced better yield