Determination of response to chemotherapy is a major requirement of personalized medicine. Resistance, whether developed or native, critically affects a treatment’s success. Single Cell Gel lectrophoresis - also known as a comet assay - is used to detect DNA damage at the level of individual eukaryotic cells. We assessed the use of comet assays in determining response to chemotherapeutic drugs that are widely used in breast and colon cancer. We treated human breast and colon cancer cell lines with melphalan, cisplatin, mechlorethamine or doxorubicin, as monotherapies. Drug activities varied even in the same cancer types, further demonstrating the heterogeneity of different cancer types. The comet assay technique can provide reliable and quick results with minimum requirements and is applicable to a wide variety of drugs.

A novel hybrid consisting of quinazoline and adenine moieties has been synthesized as a precursor of a potential biologically active target compound. The structure of 9-(4-methoxyquinazolin-2-yl)-9H-purin-6-amine (2) was characterized and confirmed using the following spectroscopic methods: LC-UV-MS, ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR and HSQC-NMR.