Targeting CAIX with small molecules : design, synthesis and biological efficacy

Hypoxia is a salient feature in many solid tumors and arises due to an inadequate and immature vascular supply resulting in a decreased delivery of oxygen and nutrients. These hypoxic regions show resistance towards conventional treatment modalities such as radio- and chemotherapy and are associated with poor survival. Under hypoxic conditions HIF-1α enhances the expression of many target genes, one of them being carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX). CAIX is a transmembrane enzyme, which is involved in reversible hydration of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate and a proton.The aim of this thesis was to target CAIX using various dual target drugs combined with radiosensitizers, cytotoxic drugs and bio-reducible drugs.In this thesis several CAIX targeting approaches have been investigated.Since nitroimidazoles are good hypoxic cell sensitizers,we have designed several dual target compounds existing out of a combination of a nitroimidazole and a carbonic anhydrase IX inhibitory moiety (Chapter 3). It has been shown that extracellular acidity limits the uptake of weak basic chemotherapeutic drugs, such as doxorubicin, and thereby decreases its efficacy. We hypothesized that combining these nitroimidazole moieties with a sulfonamide/sulfamide/sulfamate to target CAIX results in a decrease in extracellular acidosis and sensitizes hypoxic tumors to chemo- and radiotherapy. Previously, our group has shown that the sulfamide-based derivative 7 enhanced the therapeutic efficacy of irradiation in a CAIX dependent manner with a sensitization enhancement ratio of 1.50,which is higher than several clinically tested radiosensitizers such as misonidazole and nimorazole. Chemosensitization efficacy was observed upon combination of 7 with doxorubicin in HT29 tumor-bearing mice (Chapter 3). A similar dual target approach may be exploitable to deliver cytotoxic drugs towards CAIX expressing cells, resulting in a specific tumor targeted delivery and consequently reduced normal tissue toxicity. Chapter 4 describes the design and synthesis of new series of dual target compounds combining several anti-cancer drugs, Only one compound, i.e. an ATRi derivative, showed a higher efficacy in combination with radiation in CAIX overexpressing cells as compared to cells lacking CAIX expression.Chapter 5 describes the design and synthesis of various bio-reducible nitroimidazole derivatives, nitrogen mustard alkylating agents and N-oxide derivatives combined with a carbonic anhydrase IX inhibiting moiety. All these compounds showed weak to moderate inhibition profiles towards several tested CA isoforms. We have observed that different substitutions and linkers within the same family of compounds influence the binding capacity to CAIX. For example derivatives 17 and 20 belong to same family, but have a different linker and substitution of the aromatic ring, leading to a different binding capacity towards CAIX.To expand our study on bio-reducible drugs, Chapter 6 describes the design and synthesis of 2-, 5-nitroimdazole and nitrogen mustards combined with carbonic anhydrase IX inhibitors by a carbamate linker. The 2-nitroimidazole derivative 1b revealed cytotoxicity in HT29 and HCT116 cell lines and might be explain by the higher reduction potential of 2-nitroimidazoles compared to 5-nitroimidazoles, since our results did show no cytotoxicity of the 5-nitroimidazole derivatives. Our future studies aim to optimize the radiosensitizing efficacy of 2b and 2c and further explore the cytotoxic properties of 1b.In conclusion, this thesis showed that the dual target nitroimidazole combined with CAIXi increases the efficacy of standard treatment modalities such as chemo and radiotherapy. Targeting CAIX with combination of cytotoxic drugs continues to be an interesting approach to target hypoxic tumors in future. Bio-reducible drugs with higher reduction potentials would serve as potential cytotoxic agents to hypoxic tumors thereby decreasing the normal tissue toxicity.