In vitro and in vivo evaluation of novel anticancer agents in triple negative breast cancer models.

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is subtype of breast disease devoid of the estrogen, progesterone, and Her2/neu receptors which are targets for pharmacological intervention. There is a need for novel anti-breast cancer agents that target TNBC. Therefore, novel isochalcone DJ52 was evaluated using the alamar blue dye exclusion assay, the luciferase colony assay, and xenograft models to determine its efficacy and potency. DJ52 significantly decreased proliferation of cells measured by using the alamar blue dye method and produced IC50 values of DJ52, DJ56, and DJ82 at 10-6M, 10-5M, and 10-5M, respectively. In vivo studies were conducted by injecting MDA-MB-231 cells into SCID mice to determine tumor regression was measured over 20 days. DJ52 at 50 mg/kg caused significant decrease in tumor volume (p value <.05) by nearly 50% compared with the control with vehicle alone. These data suggest that DJ52 has merit for further evaluation as a novel anticancer agent.