Abstract

Boron containing compound (BCC) offers the potential further development for therapy against malignant cancers. We successfully synthesized a new compound based on curcumin structure containing boron atoms, named as CCB-2 and revealed its cytotoxic activities on various cancer cell lines. The compound was simply synthesized based on aldol condensation using acetone and 4-formylphenyl boronic acid resulted a symmetry CCB-2 compound. The compound was then tested for cytotoxic activities in several cell lines. CCB-2 demonstrated cytotoxic effect on several cancer cells and less toxic in fibroblast cells, interestingly this compound also toxic in highly metastatic cancer. In addition, the cytotoxic activity of CCB-2 was correlated to the modulation of cell cycle arrest in G2/M and surprisingly decreased the accumulation of intracellular ROS level in cancer cells. Further experiments are still needed to establish CCB-2 as anticancer with boron-based compound against malignant cancers.

Key words: boron compound, curcumin analog, cytotoxicity, cancer cells