Studies show that treating hypoxic tumor cells with β-aminopropionitrile (β-APN) inhibits the lysyl oxidase (LOX) enzyme, which may prevent the metastasis of the cancerous tumor. Unfortunately, β-APN is toxic and kills epidermal cells, therefore, ingestion of it is harmful. This study focuses on synthesizing molecules that will incorporate β-APN, with the hope of decreasing its toxicity to non-cancerous cells. Target molecules, a series of 3-(benzylamino)propionitrile products, are synthesized by the reductive amination of aldehydes and β-APN. Previous studies have demonstrated that the product of β-APN and 4-bromobenzaldehyde shows strong inhibition. Given these results, this work targets new β-APN inhibitors from benzaldehyde, 2-bromobenzaldehyde, 3-bromobenzaldehyde, and p-tolualdehyde (Figure 1). The newly synthesized products will then be tested against the LOX enzyme to determine which inhibitors are most effective, and increase understanding of how the inhibitors interact with LOX.

Synthesizing small lysyl oxidase inhibitors with β-aminoproprionitrile

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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