Sulfoxide-containing aromatic nitrogen mustards as hypoxia-directed bioreductive cytotoxins.

A series of diaryl and alkylaryl sulfoxide-containing nitrogen mustards were synthesized and evaluated for their hypoxia-selective cytotoxicity against V-79 cells in vitro as well as for their metabolism profiles with the rat S-9 fractions. In general, the diaryl sulfoxides (4, 5, and 7-9) showed much greater hypoxia selectivity (11-27-fold) than the alkylaryl sulfoxides (approximately 3-fold) (1 and 3). The fused diphenyl sulfoxides (10 and 11), on the other hand, showed very low hypoxia selectivity (1.3-3-fold). Compound 10 was highly cytotoxic under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions, while 11 showed low cytotoxicity under both conditions. The bioreduction of 8 by the rat S-9 fraction under anaerobic conditions was inhibited by menadione and enhanced by benzaldehyde, acetaldehyde, or 2-hydroxypyrimidine suggesting the involvement of aldehyde oxidase in the reduction of the sulfoxides. Bioreductive metabolism studies of selected model sulfoxides suggested that diaryl sulfoxides are better substrates for aldehyde oxidase than alkylaryl sulfoxides.