FdCyd

Fluorinated nucleosides are well-established as anticancer and antiviral medications.As with many pharmaceuticals, the effects of fluorine modifications are often only partially understood.In this work, the effects of 5-fluorination of the cytosine nucleobase on the structures and glycosidic bond stabilities of the protonated canonical DNA and RNA cytidine nucleosides (dCyd and Cyd) are examinedIR multiple photon dissociation action spectroscopy experiments and electronic structure calculations are employed to probe the structural influences of 5-fluorination.Spectral signatures in the IR fingerprint and hydrogen-stretching regions indicate that 5-fluorination heavily directs for and solely produces O2 protonation para to the 5-fluoro substituent.This differs from the canonical cytidine nucleosides where roughly equal populations of O2 and N3 protonated structures were observedEnergy-resolved collision-induced dissociation experiments combined with survival yield analyses are performed to probe the influence of 5-fluorination on glycosidic bond stability.Trends in the energy-dependence of the survival yield curves indicate that 5-fluorination weakens the glycosidic bond, and that the influence of 5-fluorination on glycosidic bond stability is much greater for dCyd than Cyd.Theory also finds that 5-fluorination weakens the glycosidic bond but predicts that the influence of 5-fluorination on N-glycosidic bond stability is roughly the same for dCyd and Cyd.Oh, what a difference the 2′-hydroxy substituent makes

The deregulation of cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) is a main issue of cancer cells for increasing their malignancy. In these terms, the sulfation pattern of HS, created by an orchestrated activity of enzymes balancing a site-specific sulfation, is of key importance. These enzymes are often deregulated by epigenetic processes in cancer, e.g., being silenced by DNA hypermethylation. Here, we address this issue in human breast cancer cell lines aiming to target epigenetic processes to reactivate HS sulfation, shifting HS into an antithrombotic phenotype for which 3-O-sulfation is particularly important. Treatment of MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells with nontoxic concentrations of 5-azacytidine (azacytidine) and 5-fluoro-2'-deoxycytidine (FdCyd) as DNMT inhibitors or vorinostat for targeting HDAC increased HS3-O-sulfation remarkably, as confirmed by fluorescence microscopy, by upregulating HS3-O-sulfotransferases, detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blot. Flow cytometry and microscopic approaches confirm that upon inhibitor treatment, increased HS3-O-sulfation improves cell binding to antithrombin, leading to an antithrombotic activity. Nevertheless, only azacytidine- and vorinostat-treated cells display anticoagulative properties, represented by attenuated thrombin formation, a lower activation of human platelet aggregation, or ATP release. In contrast, FdCyd additionally upregulated tissue factor expression in both cell lines, overshadowing the anticoagulant effects of HS, leading to an overall prothrombotic phenotype. Our data provide evidence for the first time that targeting epigenetic processes in HS sulfation is a valuable means to foster anticoagulative cell properties for decreasing malignancy and metastatic potency. These data warrant further investigations to fine-tune epigenetic targeting and to search for potential biomarkers attributed to these activities.