Drug – bio-affecting and body treating compositions – Designated organic active ingredient containing – Having -c- – wherein x is chalcogen – bonded directly to...
Reexamination Certificate
2001-02-27
2003-04-15
Lambkin, Deborah C. (Department: 1626)
Drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions
Designated organic active ingredient containing
Having -c-, wherein x is chalcogen, bonded directly to...
C536S016800, C549S297000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06548536
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to an agent for inducing apoptosis which comprises a tetrocarcin derivative as an active ingredient and which is useful for preventive and/or therapeutic treatment of cancers, AIDS or the like.
BACKGROUND ART
Cell death is considered to be caused by two types of mechanisms, and one of them is the cell death called necrosis. This process is morphologically characterized by marked expansion of mitochondria, swelling of cytoplasm, degeneration of nuclei and subsequent decay and autolysis of cells, and the process occurs passively and accidentally. Necrocytosis is generally observed when cells receive physical injury, chemical toxicoids or the like.
The other type is the cell death called apoptosis or programmed cell death (Kerr, J. F. and Wyllie, A. H., Br. J. Cancer, 26, pp.239-257, 1972). This cell death is considered to occur under various physiological conditions. The morphological characteristics thereof include absence of contact with neighboring cells, concentration of cytoplasm, pyknosis of chromatin participating in endonuclease activity and pyknosis of nuclei, segmentation of nuclei and so forth, and disappearance of microvilli of cell surfaces, smoothing of cell surfaces (membrane blebbing on cell surfaces) and the like are also observed. Further, a phenomenon is also observed in which nucleosome units of DNA are fragmented into DNAs of 180 to 200 base length by the endonuclease activity. The mechanism of apoptosis is explained as a mechanism of phagocytosis for final fragments of apoptic cells by neighboring cells.
Apoptosis is essential in many physiological processes including germ development and clonal selection in an immune system (Ito, N. et al., Cell, 66, pp.233-243, 1991), and the process is initiated by various stimulations such as removal of glucocorticoid hormones or certain types of growth factors in immature thymocytes (Watanabe-Fukunaga, R. et al., Nature, 356, pp.314-317, 1992). The apoptosis is also reported to be induced by cell damage by cytotoxic T cells, hormone-dependent tissue atrophy, irradiation with radiation, NK cells, killer cells, cytokines such as a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and so forth (Wyllie, A. H. et al., Int. Rev. Cytol., 68, pp.251-306, 1980; Duvall, E. and Wyllie, A. H., Immunology Today, 7, pp.115-119, 1986; Sellins, K. S. et al., J. Immunol., 139, pp.3199-3206, 1987; Yamada, T. et al., Int. J. Radiat. Biol., 53, pp.65-75, 1988; Wyllie, A. H., Nature, 284, pp.555-556, 1980; Schmid, D. S. et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 83, pp.1881-1885, 1986; Hiserodt, J. C. et al., J. Immunol., 129, pp.1782-1787, 1982; Howell, D. M. et al., J. Immunol., 140, pp.689-692, 1988; Gillian, B. et al., Eur. J. Immunol. 17, pp.689-693, 1987).
In addition, certain kinds of antibodies such as anti-CD3 antibodies, anti-Apo-1 antibodies and anti-Fas antibodies also induce apoptosis (Trauth, B. C. et al., Science, 245, pp.301-305, 1989; Smith, C. A. et al., Nature, 337, pp.181-184, 1989; Tadakuma, T. et al., Eur. J. Immunol., 20, pp.779-784, 1990), and apoptosis has also been verified in findings of spontaneous regression of malignancies (Yasuo Nakamura et al., Rinsho Hifuka, 35, pp.289-295, 1981).
A series of cysteine proteases called caspase is known to be activated in the process of apoptosis, which is preserved over the species as a biochemical mechanism involved in the induction of apoptosis (Miura, M. et al., Cell, 75, pp.653-660, 1993; Nicholson, D. W. et al., Nature, 376, pp.37-43, 1995). It has been elucidated that degradation of plural protein substrates by the aforementioned caspase triggers the induction of apoptosis, and an increase of the enzymatic activity of caspase is a biochemical sign indicating induction of apoptosis (Enari, M. et al., Nature, 391, pp.43-50, 1998; Sakahira, H. et al., Nature, 391, pp.96-99, 1998).
It is known that the process of the aforementioned caspase activation is suppressed by proteins belonging to the Bcl-2 family, e.g., Bcl-2 and Bcl-X
L
, and when the expression levels of the proteins of the Bcl-2 family increase, the activation of caspase due to various apoptosis inductive stimulations is suppressed, thereby apoptosis fails to be induced (Hockenbery, D. M., BioEssays, 17, pp.631-638, 1995; Reed, J. C., J. Cell. Biol., 124, pp.1-6, 1994; Steller, H., Science, 267, pp.1445-1449, 1995).
As diseases caused by resistance to apoptosis due to the increase of expression levels of the Bcl-2 family proteins, examples include human follicular B-type lymphoma (Tsujimoto, Y. et al., Science, 228, pp.1440-1443, 1985), non-hormone dependent prostatic cancer (McDonnell, T. et al., Cancer Res., 52, pp.6940-6944, 1992; Colombel, M. et al., Am. J. Pathlogy, 143, pp.390-400, 1993), hormonotherapy resistant breast cancer (Leek, R. D. et al., Br. J. Cancer, 69, pp.135-139, 1994; Silverstrini, R. et al., J. National Cancer Inst., 86, pp.499-504, 1994), anticancer agent-resistant tumor (Ynis, J. J. et al., N. Engl. J. Med., 320, pp.1047-1054, 1989; Campos, L. et al., Blood, 81, pp.3091-3096, 1993), arteriosclerosis (Pollman, M. J. et al., Nature Med., 4, pp.222-227, 1998), Rheumatoid arthritis (Mueller- Ladner, U. et al., Arthritis and Rheumatism, 37 (suppl.) S163, 1994; Firestein, G. S. et al., J. Clin. Invest., 96, pp.1631-1638, 1995) and so forth.
Therapies by administration of antisense RNA for bcl-2 or bcl-X
L
have been reported as remedies for diseases resulting from the increase of expression levels of Bcl-2. However, no effective pharmacotherapy using a low molecular organic compound has been known so far (Webb, A. et al. Lancet, 349, pp.1137-1141, 1997; Ziegler, A. et al., J. National Cancer Inst., 89, pp.1027-1036, 1997; Jansen, B. et al., Nature Med., 4, pp.232-234, 1998; Pollman, M. J. et al., Nature Med., 4, pp.222-227, 1998).
Tetrocarcins are a class of antibiotics and are known to have an antibacterial and anti-cancer activity. Among them, tetrocarcin A has the following structure.
In addition to the above tetrocarcin A, tetrocarcins B, C, D, E1, E2, F, F-1, F-2, G, H, I, J, K, L, M and so forth having structures similar thereto are known. The aforementioned compounds wherein the 9- and 21-positions are substituted with lower alkanoyloxy groups or wherein the 9-, 17- and 21-positions are substituted with lower alkanoyloxy groups are also included in the tetrocarcins. These tetrocarcins are described in the following patent documents (they are occasionally referred to using DC-11 as DC-11-A, DC-11-B and so forth without using the name of tetrocarcin): Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication (Kokai) Nos. 54-138501/1979, 55-79322/1980, 56-139500/1981, U.S. Pat. No. 4,346,075 (all for tetrocarcin A), Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication Nos. 56-115794/1981, 56-122392/1981 (both for tetrocarcin B), Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication Nos. 56-75500/1981, 56-122392/1981 (both for tetrocarcin C), Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 56-122392/1981 (tetrocarcin D), Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 57-38796/1982 (tetrocarcins E1 and E2), Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 57-53498/1982 (tetrocarcins F, G and H), Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 57-171997/1982 (tetrocarcins I, J, K, L and M), Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 57-7479/1982 (tetrocarcins F-1 and F-2), and Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication 57-7479/1982 (compounds having lower alkanoyloxy groups at the 9- and 21-positions, and compounds having lower alkanoyloxy groups at the 9-, 17- and 21-positions).
The tetrocarcins are also known to have anti-Piroplasma activity (Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication Nos. 59-161317/1984 and 60-1129/1985). Furthermore, there are known several compounds as analogues of tetrocarcins [the family of BE-45722 (Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 9-227587/1997, antibacterial activity), tetromycins (tetromycins A and B (Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 8-165286/1996), tetromycins C1 to C5 (Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 10-057089/1998), antibacterial activity), kijanimicins (Japanese Patent Publication
Hamano Masami
Hara Mitsunobu
Ikeda Shun-ichi
Kanazawa Junji
Kanda Yutaka
Greenblum & Bernstein P.L.C.
Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co. Ltd.
Lambkin Deborah C.
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