BMC Chemistry (Jan 2024)

Synthesis, design, biological evaluation, and computational analysis of some novel uracil-azole derivatives as cytotoxic agents

  • Leila Emami,
  • Fateme Zare,
  • Soghra Khabnadideh,
  • Zahra Rezaei,
  • Zahra Sabahi,
  • Saman Zare Gheshlaghi,
  • Marzieh Behrouz,
  • Mina Emami,
  • Zahra Ghobadi,
  • Sedighe Madadelahi Ardekani,
  • Fatemeh Barzegar,
  • Ali Ebrahimi,
  • Razieh Sabet

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13065-023-01106-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 18, no. 1
pp. 1 – 17

Abstract

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Abstract The design and synthesis of novel cytotoxic agents is still an interesting topic for medicinal chemistry researchers due to the unwanted side effects of anticancer drugs. In this study, a novel series of uracil–azole hybrids were designed and synthesized. The cytotoxic activity, along with computational studies: molecular docking, molecular dynamic simulation, density functional theory, and ADME properties were also, evaluated. The compounds were synthesized by using 3-methyl-6-chlorouracil as the starting material. Cytotoxicity was determined using MTT assay in the breast carcinoma cell line (MCF-7) and Hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (HEPG-2). These derivatives demonstrated powerful inhibitory activity against breast and hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines in comparison to Cisplatin as positive control. Among these compounds, 4j displayed the best selectivity profile and good activity with IC50 values of 16.18 ± 1.02 and 7.56 ± 5.28 µM against MCF-7 and HEPG-2 cell lines respectively. Structure–activity relationships revealed that the variation in the cytotoxic potency of the synthesized compounds was affected by various substitutions of benzyl moiety. The docking output showed that 4j bind well in the active site of EGFR and formed a stable complex with the EGFR protein. DFT was used to investigate the reactivity descriptors of 4a and 4j. The outputs demonstrated that these uracil–azole hybrids can be considered as potential cytotoxic agents.

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