Prostate cancer is the second most diagnosed non-skin cancer, among men. The incidence rate of this cancer has also increased in Iran in the last ten years. Androgen deprivation therapy is a common treatment but inevitably, prostate cancer often evolves to a castration resistant state. Chemotherapeutic drugs such as cisplatin besides the acquired drug resistance which develops by time, still presented some drawbacks. In such situations, structure– activity relationships (SARs)-based studies create the impetus for developing new cancer chemotherapeutic agents. The main aim of our study is to investigate anticancer effects of 6- and 8-farnesyloxycarbostyril (6fq and 8fq) compounds on human prostate cancer cells (DU145) and human dermal fibroblast (HDF) cells by MTT and PI/annexin V double-staining assays. The structural analysis of 6- and 8fq compounds was performed in silico. Cell death was evaluated by MTT assay in which, cells were treated with increased concentration of 6fq and 8fq for 24, 48 and 72 hours. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values of 6fq and 8fq for DU145 cells were 69.84 and 34 μg/ml and for HDF cells were 86.21 and 92.55 μg/ml, respectively after 48 hours of treatments. The results of PI/annexin V assays proved that cancer cell death caused by 8fq was induced via apoptosis. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that 8fq has a potent growth inhibition effect on DU145 but not on HDF cells. For the next step, anticancer effects of 8fq on DU145 xenograft tumor bearing animal models need to be explored.

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