PREPARATION OF SOME ARYLHYDRAZONES OF MANNICH BASES DESIGNED AS CYTOTOXIC AGENTS

Alkylating agents represent a class of chemotherapeutic anticancer agents used in the treatment of cancer. A large number of alkylating agents have been synthesized and several of them are in clinical use today. In an attempt to develop drugs to combat the disease, it has become Increasingly important to synthesize new agents based on rational design along with systematic strategies and advances in biology. The fundamental requirement of an anticancer agent would be the selective susceptibility of the tumor to the agent's cytotoxic action. Mannich bases have a broad spectrum of activity -and earlier work from these laboratories has demonstrated the antineoplastic activity of these compounds. Mannich bases were synthesized by varying the substituent pattern in the a and a' positions to the carbonyl group and their corresponding arylhydrazones in order to determine the cytotoxic activity of these compounds. Variation in the substituents in the aryl ring in the hydrazones of the following two series of compounds was carried out: namely 1-arv1-3-dimethylamino-l-propanone hydrochloride (II) and 1-ary1-5-dimethylamino-l-penten-3-one hydrochloride (IIIa) and examined as candidate cytotoxic agents