Novel halogenated 3-deazapurine, 7-deazapurine and alkylated 9-deazapurine derivatives of l-ascorbic or imino-l-ascorbic acid: Synthesis, antitumour and antiviral activity evaluations

Keeping the potential synergy of biological activity of synthetic anomalous derivatives of deazapurines and l-ascorbic acid (l-AA) in mind, we have synthesized new 3-, 7- and 9-deazapurine derivatives of l-ascorbic (1–4, 8–10, 13–15) and imino-l-ascorbic acid (5–7, 11, 12, 16–19). These novel compounds were evaluated for their cytostatic and antiviral activity in vitro against a panel of human malignant tumour cell lines and normal murine fibroblasts (3T3). Among all evaluated compounds, the 9-deazapurine derivative of l-AA (13) exerted the most potent inhibitory activity on the growth of CEM/0 cells (IC(50) = 4.1 ± 1.8 μM) and strong antiproliferative effect against L1210/0 (IC(50) = 4.7 ± 0.1 μM) while the 9-deazahypoxanthine derivative of l-AA (15) showed the best effect against HeLa cells (IC(50) = 5.6 ± 1.3 μM) and prominent effect on L1210/0 (IC(50) = 4.5 ± 0.5 μM). Furthermore, the 9-deazapurine derivative disubstituted with two imino-l-AA moieties (18) showed the best activity against L1210/0 tumour cells (IC(50) = 4.4 ± 0.3 μM) and the most pronounced antiproliferative effects against MiaPaCa-2 cells (IC(50) = 5.7 ± 0.2 μM). All these compounds showed selective cytostatic effect on tumour cell lines in comparison with embryonal murine fibroblasts (3T3). When evaluating their antiviral activity, the 3-deazapurine derivative of l-AA (3) exhibited the highest activity against both laboratory-adapted strains of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) (AD-169 and Davis) with EC(50) values comparable to those of the well-known anti-HCMV drug ganciclovir and without cytotoxic effects on normal human embryonal lung (HEL) cells.