Ab Initio Studies of the Reaction of Hydrogen Transfer from DNA to the Calicheamicinone Diradical

The biological activity of enediyne chemotherapeutic (anti-cancer) agents is attributed to their ability to cleave duplex DNA. Part of the reaction of cleavage is the abstraction of hydrogens from the deoxyribose moiety of DNA by the biradical formed via a Bergman rearrangement. The mechanism of the reaction of abstraction of two hydrogen atoms from two deoxyribophosphate molecules by the calicheamicinone biradical is studied with ab initio calculations at Hartree-Fock and post-Hartree-Fock level. The Titan program is used to perform the calculations. It is found that the reactions are exothermic and thus thermodynamically reasonable. The mechanism of DNA cleavage by the enediyne-containing drugs is likely to proceed by the abstraction of the hydrogens from deoxyribose by the biradical formed by the drug. Further studies should determine in which way the modification of the drug’s structure would make this reaction even more exothermic and, thus, more likely to occur.