As one of the major therapeutic options for cancer treatment, chemotherapy has limited selectivity against cancer cells. Consequently, this therapeutic strategy offers a small therapeutic window with potentially high toxicity and thus limited efficacy of doses that can be tolerated by patients. Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are an emerging class of anti-cancer therapeutic drugs that can deliver highly cytotoxic molecules directly to cancer cells. To date, twelve ADCs have received market approval, with several others in clinical stages. ADCs have become a powerful class of therapeutic agents in oncology and hematology. ADCs consist of recombinant monoclonal antibodies that are covalently bound to cytotoxic chemicals via synthetic linkers. The linker has a key role in ADC outcomes because its characteristics substantially impact the therapeutic index efficacy and pharmacokinetics of these drugs. Stable linkers and ADCs can maintain antibody concentration in blood circulation, and they do not release the cytotoxic drug before it reaches its target, thus resulting in minimum off-target effects. The linkers used in ADC development can be classified as cleavable and non-cleavable. The former, in turn, can be grouped into three types: hydrazone, disulfide, or peptide linkers. In this review, we highlight the various linkers used in ADC development and their design strategy, release mechanisms, and future perspectives.

This review provides an overview of the broad applicability of s-triazine. Our many years working with this intriguing moiety allow us to discuss its wide activity spectrum (inhibition against MAO-A and -B, anticancer/antiproliferative and antimicrobial activity, antibacterial activity against MDR clinical isolates, antileishmanial agent, and use as drug nano delivery system). Most of the compounds addressed in our studies and those performed by other groups contain only N-substitution. Exploiting the concept of orthogonal chemoselectivity, first described by our group, we have successfully incorporated different nucleophiles in different orders into s-triazine core for application in peptides/proteins at a temperature compatible with biological systems.

Peptides displaying antimicrobial properties are being regarded as useful tools to evade and combat antimicrobial resistance, a major public health challenge. Here we have addressed dendrimers, attractive molecules in pharmaceutical innovation and development displaying broad biological activity. Triazine-based dendrimers were fully synthesized in the solid phase, and their antimicrobial activity and some insights into their mechanisms of action were explored. Triazine is present in a large number of compounds with highly diverse biological targets with broad biological activities and could be an excellent branching unit to accommodate peptides. Our results show that the novel peptide dendrimers synthesized have remarkable antimicrobial activity against Gram-negative bacteria (E. coli and P. aeruginosa) and suggest that they may be useful in neutralizing the effect of efflux machinery on resistance.

2,4,6-Trichloro-1,3,5-triazine (TCT) offers the unique ability to undergo sequential nucleophilic substitution reactions using regular nucleophiles (first Cl replacement at 0 °C, second at RT, and third at >90 °C), making s-triazine a privileged scaffold-finding application in drug development with an extension towards the development of new materials. This selective chemical property of TCT fulfills the goal of chemists to control organic structures and make them react in the required conditions for achieving each objective. In this regard, orthogonality and chemoselectivity are two modern organic chemistry concepts which have been exploited in various areas of research, ranging from supramolecular chemistry to organic/bioconjugation chemistry. We have demonstrated the fusion of these two concepts using TCT as “Orthogonal Chemoselectivity” and defined it as discrimination between reactive sites in any order. The usage of azide as one of the nucleophiles modulated the reactivity of the s-triazine core for the last Cl replacement. This allowed us to overcome the barrier of higher temperature (>90 °C) for the last Cl replacement which happened at RT, taking advantage of side chains of Cys, Tyr and Lys in a biological context. In this presentation, we revise the chemistry developed in our laboratories to manipulate the TCT core for application in our medicinal chemistry programs and in bioconjugation.