Apogossypolone is an inhibitor of Bcl-2, Mcl-1 and Bcl-XL with Ki values of 35nM, 25nM and 660nM, respectively [1].
The MTT-based cell cytotoxicity assay shows that apogossypolone has an anticancer activity with IC50 values of 1, 2 and 3μM, respectively in PC-3, DU-145 (human prostate cancer cell lines) and MDA-MB-231(human breast cancer cell line). Apogossypolone is also found to inhibit the colony formation of DU-145 cells. The mechanism is that apogossypolone binds to Bcl-2 and prevents its association with BH3-only pro-apoptotic proteins, leading the pro-apoptotic proteins to participate in the apoptotic response [2].
Besides prostate cancer and breast cancer, apogossypolone is also potent in follicular lymphoma. Apogossypolone significantly inhibits the cell growth via inducing apoptosis in WSU-FSCCL cell line with IC50 value of 109.2nM at 72h [3].
References:
[1] Zhang XQ, Huang XF, Hu XB, Zhan YH, An QX, Yang SM, Xia AJ, Yi J, Chen R, Mu SJ, Wu DC. Apogossypolone, a novel inhibitor of antiapoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins, induces autophagy of PC-3 and LNCaP prostate cancer cells in vitro. Asian J Androl. 2010 Sep;12(5):697-708.
[2] Zhan Y, Jia G, Wu D, Xu Y, Xu L. Design and synthesis of a gossypol derivative with improved antitumor activities. Arch Pharm (Weinheim). 2009 Apr;342(4):223-9.
[3] Arnold AA, Aboukameel A, Chen J, Yang D, Wang S, Al-Katib A, Mohammad RM. Preclinical studies of Apogossypolone: a new nonpeptidic pan small-molecule inhibitor of Bcl-2, Bcl-XL and Mcl-1 proteins in Follicular Small Cleaved Cell Lymphoma model. Mol Cancer. 2008 Feb 14;7:20.