Kinetics of lactone hydrolysis in antitumor drugs of camptothecin series as studied by fluorescence spectroscopy.

Potent antitumor activity exhibited by 20-S-camptothecin (CPT) and numerous derivatives is known to be lost upon opening of the alpha-hydroxy-lactone ring of these drugs, hydrolyzable at neutral and basic pH. To quantify in 'real time' the lactone hydrolysis reaction in CPTs under physiological conditions, we have applied a non-perturbing approach by fluorescence spectroscopy. CPT and a set of its derivatives (21-lactam-S-CPT, 10,11-(methylenedioxy)-CPT, CPT-11, SN-38, topotecan, tricyclic ketone-CPT) with antitumor activity varying from negligible to 10 times that of CPT have been studied. Prior to the kinetic measurements, the effects of substitutions, pH, polarity of molecular environment, lactone ring opening (lactone-carboxylate transition) have been investigated in terms of the UV-visible absorption and fluorescence emission spectra of CPTs. Then the determined parameters of the fluorescence emission spectra corresponding to the respective lactone and carboxylate forms have been used to estimate the residual lactone percentage as a function of time. The reproducibility of the obtained data demonstrates that the spectroscopic approach provides a satisfactory precision for this kind of measurements. For CPT at pH 7.3, the lactone half-life was 29.4 +/- 1.7 min and the lactone percentage at equilibrium was 20.9 +/- 0.3%. Within a series of derivatives with substitutions at quinoline rings, the lactone half-life varied from 29 to 32 min and the equilibrium lactone content varied from 15% to 23%. For each compound, even slight increase of pH from 7.1 to 7.3 or from 7.3 to 7.6 logically leads to a remarkable decrease of both lactone half-life and equilibrium lactone percentage.