8a, a New Acridine Antiproliferative and Pro-Apoptotic Agent Targeting HDAC1/DNMT1.

Epigenetic therapy using histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors has become an attractive project in new drug development. However, DNA methylation and histone acetylation are important epigenetic ways to regulate the occurrence and development of leukemia. Given previous studies, -(2-aminophenyl)benzamide acridine (), as a histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1) inhibitor, induces apoptosis and shows significant anti-proliferative activity against histiocytic lymphoma U937 cells. HDAC1 plays a role in the nucleus, which we confirmed by finding that entered the nucleus. Subsequently, we verified that mainly passes through the endogenous (mitochondrial) pathway to induce cell apoptosis. From the protein interaction data, we found that also affected the expression of DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1). Therefore, an experiment was performed to assess the binding of to DNMT1 at the molecular and cellular levels. We found that the binding strength of to DNMT1 enhanced in a dose-dependent manner. Additionally, inhibits the expression of mRNA and its protein. These findings suggested that the anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic activities of against leukemia cells were achieved by targeting HDAC1 and DNMT1.