| pubmed-article:2538235 | pubmed:abstractText | Human colorectal and pulmonary carcinomas have been shown to contain high levels of opioid peptides and their corresponding membrane-bound receptors. Therefore possible targeted drugs, consisting of modified enkephalins linked to cytotoxic drugs, were designed. Such conjugates were expected to be specifically internalized within opioid receptor-bearing cells. As a model to this approach, we have synthesized enkephalin-ellipticinium conjugates in which the D-Ala2-D-Leu5-enkephalin (DADLE) was coupled to the 2-nitrogen of either ellipticine or 9-hydroxyellipticine, two drugs acting through different mechanisms of cytotoxicity. These conjugates, DADLE-ellipticinium (NME) and DA-DLE-9-hydroxyellipticinium (NMHE), respectively, were previously shown to retain in vitro both opioid receptors and DNA affinities close to those of the parent compounds. In this paper, we first show that each individual moiety in the complexes remains capable of recognizing its cellular targets. Thus, pretreatment of NG108-15 cells containing delta-opioid receptors by the DADLE-ellipticinium conjugates induced a loss of opioid receptor (down-regulation), while the smaller peptide conjugates, tyrosinyl-D-alanylglycine-ellipticinium, prepared as control, do not. On the other hand, peptide-NMHE conjugates were able to induce DNA topoisomerase II-associated DNA strand breaks suggesting that they have a mode of action similar to that of their parent molecule, NMHE. We then examined whether or not these molecules could exert a specific toxicity on opioid receptor-bearing cells. However, when tested on NG108-15 tumor cells and L-fibroblasts as control, the enkephalin-ellipticinium conjugates (DADLE-NME and DADLE-NMHE) proved to be similarly more cytotoxic on both cell lines than their ellipticinium (NME and NMHE) precursors. In order to understand this apparent lack of specificity we examined the cellular accumulation and distribution of DADLE-NME by fluorescence techniques. These experiments revealed that an important intracellular overconcentration caused by a nonspecific process is probably masking the specific targeted effect of the conjugates. Hence, the project of linking DADLE to highly cytotoxic molecules which cannot cross the plasma membrane without site-directed targeting is discussed. | lld:pubmed |
