Design and Development of Distinct Tetracyanoquinodimethane Derivatives Exhibiting Dual Effect of Fluorescence and Anticancer Activity

Abstract

AbstractTetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) is known to react with primary/secondary amines to generate mono/di‐substituted TCNQ derivatives resulting in optical (fluorescence) and non‐linear optical characteristics. However, the choice of amine plays a key role in the sequel of certain material attributes. Nevertheless, demonstration of TCNQ derivatives, specifically obtained by reacting TCNQ with simple & small amine side chains of existing anticancer drugs, emerging in dual effect of fluorescence as well as anticancer activity, is not explored so far and has been still existing as a gap in TCNQ related research. Additionally, mono/di‐substituted TCNQ's owning strong fluorescence in solutions (∼10 to 104 order) than their solids are still lacking and are in need to be generated. In this regard, we aimed to synthesize straightforward TCNQ derivatives in single step by reacting TCNQ with specific (simple and small) amines being side chains of existing anticancer drugs (a contemporary design approach) and successfully obtained novel mono/di‐substituted TCNQ derivatives manifesting dual effect of fluorescence and anticancer activity. In this fashion, we have avoided the usage of bulky main moiety of an anticancer molecule, since our aim was not to use the total anticancer drug as such, like in a Pro‐drug preparation, but we intended to use the minimal part of an anticancer drug to invent novel TCNQ derivatives as anticancer active fluorophores. Wavelength of maximum emission for all the five potent molecules was within ∼525 nm‐696 nm. All compounds showed moderate anticancer activity against different cancer cell lines and IC50 values were in the range of 11 to 49 μM, when the synthesized novel compounds were tested in B16F10, MDA‐MB‐231 and A549 cell lines. Henceforth, this study has emanated in the first generation TCNQ derivatives as organic fluorescent anticancer active molecules.