Cytotoxics derived from distamycin A and congeners

Distamycin A is an antibiotic, characterised by an oligopeptidic pyrrolocarbamoyl frame ending with an amidino moiety, which binds reversibly to DNA minor groove with high selectivity for TA-rich sequences and shows antiviral and antiprotozoal activity. Distamycin was used as DNA sequence selective vector of alkylating functions, leading to a substantial increase of cytotoxicity in comparison to that, very weak, of distamycin itself. The benzoyl nitrogen mustard derivative of desformyldistamycin, tallimustine, was selected as a candidate antineoplastic drug in view of its strong activity against a series of experimental tumors. Tallimustine, like distamycin, shows DNA selective binding to TA-rich sequences but its cytotoxicity is not associated with DNA strand breaks and interstrand crosslinking, at variance with classical phenyl nitrogen mustards. Tallimustine represents an important model for the design of new minor groove alkylating agents derived from distamycin and analogues, including the so-called lexitropsins, sequence-reading oligopeptides in which one or more N-methyl-pyrrole units of distamycin are replaced by imidazole or other rings. The structural features of the alkylating moieties and binding frames, the antitumor activities and the mechanism of action of most representative cytotoxics derived from distamycin and congeners are discussed. Some of these, recently reported, show an activity profile apparently superior to tallimustine. Finally, a concise survey of representative hybrid compounds in which known non-alkylating cytotoxic agents or their active moieties have been tethered to distamycin and congeners is presented and briefly discussed. These compounds witness the attention paid to this approach on the basis of the interest for the DNA binding features of distamycin A.