May 15, 2024-GTU Office of Press and Public Relations
The project titled "Synthesis and Investigation of Biological Activities of Flavonoid Substituted Cyclotriphosphazene Compounds" by İbrahim Kitmür, a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Gebze Technical University (GTU), has been entitled for support within the scope of the TÜBİTAK 1002-B program.
Here's a summary of the project, supervised by Prof. Dr. Gönül Yenilmez Çiftçi from the Department of Chemistry at the Faculty of Science at GTU: Cancer is a complex class of diseases characterized by rapid, uncontrolled cell division that interferes with normal cell division principles, leading to pathological proliferation. In 2020, there were around 19.3 million new cases of cancer and approximately 10.0 million cancer-related deaths. It is estimated that the global cancer burden will increase by 41% to 28.4 million cases by 2040 compared to 2020. Therefore, research in this field is rapidly advancing, and there is a need to develop new drugs with minimal side effects. Flavonoids, abundantly found in vegetables and fruits and consumed naturally by humans for centuries, can potentially be used as drug agents with no side effects when prepared synthetically. In this context, novel and effective flavonoid derivatives may have the potential to be developed as anticancer agents with cyclotriphosphazenes. This study aims to synthesize new-generation flavonoid derivative cyclotriphosphazene compounds by bringing together spiro derivatives of cyclotriphosphazene and flavonoid derivatives on the same platform and to investigate their apoptotic effects and antioxidant properties in breast cancer cells (MCF-7). In the study, compounds with spiro structure were particularly selected as the main skeleton since an increase in potential anticancer properties is expected due to the displacement of chlorines attached to the phosphorus atom in cyclotriphosphazene derivatives by flavonoids.
