Antitumor activity of DABA-containing carboxylate Zn complexes on breast cancer cell line MCF-7

Abstract The coordination polymer [Zn 2 (DABA) 3 (CH 3 OH)] (DABA=4-dimethylaminobenzoic acid) (ZP) was obtained by hydrothermal synthesis using DABA and Zn(NO 3 ) 2 ·6H 2 O as substrates. The exact structure of ZP was confirmed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)， and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) assay was used to detect the cytotoxicity of ZP on the following cell types (A549, HepG2, Huh-7, MCF-7, LO2 cells), and the results showed that the complex was significantly toxic to MCF-7 cell line and less toxic to normal hepatocytes LO2. In addition, the cell cycle and mitochondrial membrane potential of the MCF-7 cell line were further measured by flow cytometry, and the experimental results indicated that different concentrations of the drug blocked the cell cycle in the S phase and significantly reduced the mitochondrial membrane potential. Western Blot experiments illustrated that ZP was able to upregulate the expression levels of cleaved PARP, cleaved caspase and bax protein and downregulate the expression level of bcl-2. These results suggest that ZP inhibits tumor cell apoptosis through a mitochondria-mediated pathway, accompanied by the regulation of bcl-2 and caspase family proteins.