Chalcones in cancer: understanding their role in terms of QSAR

Chalcones are a group of plant-derived polyphenolic compounds belonging to the flavonoids family and possess a wide variety of cytoprotective and modulatory functions. The results showed that chalcones inhibit the proliferation of MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 by inducing apoptosis and blocking cell cycle progression in the G2/M phase. Immunoblot assay showed that chalcones significantly decreased the expression of cyclin Bl, cyclin A and Cdc2 protein, as well as increased the expression of p21 and p27 in a p53-independent manner, contributing to cell cycle arrest. In this research we tried to review the anticancer effect of chalcones derivatives, and to evaluate new QSARs which will help in the understanding of the role of chalcones and of their analogues on cancer. Simultaneously a comparative study will be presented. Our QSAR results reveal that in almost all cases, the clog P parameter plays an important part in the QSAR relationships (linear or bilinear model). In some cases the steric factors such as the CMR or the substituents MR (linear) are important. Electronic effects are comparatively unimportant. The study shows that log P as calculated from the Clog P program is suitable for this form of QSAR study.