Serendipitous discovery of potent human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma anti-cancer molecules: A fortunate failure of a rational molecular design

Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACis) play an important role as valuable drugs targeted to cancer therapy: several HDACis are currently being tested in clinical trials. Two new potential HDACis 1a and 1d, characterized by the presence of a biphenyl-4-sulfonamide group as a connection unit between the N-4-[(E)-(2-formylhydrazinylidene)methyl]-3-hydroxyphenyl and the 2-hydroxy-N-(trifluoroacetyl)benzamide moiety, respectively, as two zinc-binding group (ZBG), have been designed, synthesized and tested for their biological activity. Surprisingly, compounds 1a and 12, this last exclusively obtained in place of 1d, exhibited a very low HDAC inhibitory activity. A serendipitous assay of these two compounds, conducted on three chemoresistant cell lines of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), showed their antiproliferative activity at low nanomolar concentrations, better than cisplatin. In vitro, biological assays indicated that compounds 1a and 12 are able to increase acetylation of histone H3 and to interfere with the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway by inducing the accumulation of PTEN protein.