Antitumor structure–activity relationship in bis-stannoxane derivatives from pyridine dicarboxylic and benzoic acids

Organometallic compounds have been proposed as new drugs for cancer treatment due to the large metal mesh with DNA. This study estimated four quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) descriptive models relating antitumor biological activity essays (ID50) in breast (MFC-7) and colon cancer (WiDr) cell lines with stannoxanes compounds derived from 2,6-pyridine-dicarboxylates [C5H3N(COO)2SnRR′] (R, R′ = alkyl, aryl) and di-n-butyltinbis-benzoates [(C6H5COO)2SnBu2]. A series of thermodynamic, structural and molecular descriptors were calculated from the geometric and electrical optimizations (PM3) of the two organotin series, in order to correlate the biological activity of the tin esters. The use of genetic algorithms and multilinear correlations yielded four mathematical models, each one with four descriptors related to molecular, area/volume, lipophilicity, and molecular dipole polarizability. These descriptors were entered into a back-propagation neural network to obtain theoretical descriptive models with the goal of proposing the development of new organotin molecules with enhanced antitumor activity.