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.