Molecular diversity of phenothiazines: design and synthesis of phenothiazine–dithiocarbamate hybrids as potential cell cycle blockers

Novel phenothiazine-dithiocarbamate analogues were designed by molecular hybridization strategy and synthesized and evaluated for their anticancer activity in vitro against three selected cancer cell lines (EC-109, MGC-803, and PC-3). The preliminary structure-activity relationship (SAR) for this phenothiazine-dithiocarbamate hybrids is explored. Among all analogues, 2-oxo-2-(10H-phenothiazin-10-yl)ethyl 4-ethylpiperazine-1-carbodithioate (8a) showed the most potent inhibitory activity with an [Formula: see text] value of [Formula: see text] against PC-3 cells. In addition, compound 8a could arrest the cell cycle at the G1 phase and regulate the expression of G1 checkpoint-related proteins, suggesting that phenothiazine-dithiocarbamate hybrids might be useful as cell cycle blockers