Such zwitterionic structure can facilitate the coordination of positive copper ion to the negative carboxylates. DNA damage and ROS generation FDA-approved Drug Library nmr by the Cu(II)–MTX system In order to investigate the nuclease activity of the copper(II) complexes with MTX, pUC18 plasmid was used as the DNA substrate, and the resulting products were analyzed by an agarose-gel electrophoresis method. The cleavage activity was determined by measuring the conversion of supercoiled plasmid DNA (form I) to open-circular DNA (form II) or linear DNA (form III). The initial experiments show that the studied drug neither alone (Fig. 6, lanes 3, 9) nor in the click here presence of hydrogen peroxide (lanes 6, 12) is able

to damage the DNA, regardless of the ligand concentration. Although Cu(II) ions alone (lanes 2, 8) and complexed (lanes 4, 10) yield some increase in the open-circular form II, significant changes in the plasmid structure are observed in the presence of H2O2 (lanes 5, 7, 11, 13). The obtained results demonstrate that complex-H2O2 (lanes 11 and

13) is the most efficient in plasmid degradation. As shown in Fig. 7, the Cu(II)–MTX-H2O2 system causes the cleavage of supercoiled DNA to its open-circular (II) and linear (III) form in a wide concentration range (from 5 μM to 1 mM). Moreover, these effects are accompanied by cutting the plasmid into shorter polynucleotide fragments, which is particularly evident on lanes 7 and 9. The quantity of the form II is in these cases negligible and streaks are the VEGFR inhibitor most visible. At a twice lower concentration of hydrogen peroxide, the plasmid destruction process is identical. Fig. 6 Agarose gel electrophoresis of pUC18 plasmid cleavage by MTX, CuCl2, and Cu(II)–MTX (1:1). Lane 1—untreated plasmid, lane 2—100 μM CuCl2, lane 3—100 μM MTX, lane 4—100 μM Cu(II)–MTX,

lane 5—100 μM Astemizole CuCl2 + 50 μM H2O2, lane 6—100 μM MTX + 50 μM H2O2, lane 7—100 μM Cu(II)–MTX + 50 μM H2O2, lane 8—50 μM CuCl2, lane 9—50 μM MTX, lane 10—50 μM Cu(II)–MTX, lane 11—50 μM Cu(II) + 50 μM H2O2, lane 12—50 μM MTX + 50 μM H2O2, lane 13—50 μM Cu(II)–MTX + 50 μM H2O2 Fig. 7 Agarose gel electrophoresis of pUC18 plasmid cleavage by Cu(II)–MTX (1:1) in the presence of 50 μM H2O2. Lane 1—untreated plasmid; Even lanes: + CuCl2 in concentrations: 1 mM, 500 μM, 100 μM, 50 μM, 25 μM, 5 μM; Odd lanes: + Cu(II)–MTX at the same, appropriate concentrations In order to gain some insight into the mechanism by which the complex-H2O2 system induces DNA cleavage, the ability to generate ROS was investigated. Most of the studied Cu(II) complexes have caused single- and double-strand DNA scissions by the oxidative mechanism in the presence of endogenous amounts of hydrogen peroxide (Suntharalingam et al., 2012; de Hoog et al., 2007; Devereux et al., 2007; Szczepanik et al., 2002; Jeżowska-Bojczuk et al., 2002).