Design, synthesis, and correlation analysis of 7-substituted 4-hydroxyquinoline-3-carboxylic acids as inhibitors of cellular respiration

Abstract
Fifteen 7-substituted 4-hydroxyquinoline-3-carboxylic acids were designed to minimize covariance between the physicochemical substituent parameters: .pi., MR [molar refractivity], and .sigma.p. The molecules were synthesized and evaluated for their ability to inhibit respiration of Ehrlich ascites mouse tumor cells as a whole cell model and their ability to inhibit malate dehydrogenase as an intracellular target enzyme model. Correlation analysis indicates that ascites cell inhibition is linearly related to .pi. and malate dehydrogenase inhibition is linearly related to MR.