Abstract

Specific and Non-Specific Cellular Responses from Redox-Active Heterocycles: Dihydroquinolines as promising Scaffolds for ‘Multi-targeting’

K M Muraleedharan, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Due to rapid development of resistance on monotherapy, most of the diseases like cancer, AIDS, atherosclerosis, malaria, mycobacterium tuberculosis etc are currently being treated with combination of drugs capable of affecting more than one target/biochemical pathways.1,2 The related concept ‘multi-target strategy’ employs a chemical entity with affinity towards multiple druggable targets associated with specific disease state, and is also subject of active research.2 One of the focuses of our laboratory is to identify heterocyclic scaffolds which can give a general cellular effect through redox imbalance 3 and also give specific effects through interference with the function(s) of specific target(s). Our studies in this direction involving a group of dihydroquinoline derivatives have given promising results which could make them potentially important in the design of new anti-cancer and anti-mycobacterium tuberculosis agents.4 Synthetic details and results from biological studies will be discussed during this presentation.