Medicinal attributes of thienopyrimidine scaffolds incorporating the aryl urea motif as potential anticancer candidates via VEGFR inhibition.

Worldwide, cancer is a major public health concern. It is a well-acknowledged life-threatening disease. Despite numerous advances in the understanding of the genetic basis of cancer growth and progression, therapeutic challenges remain high. Human tumors exhibited mutation or overexpression of several tyrosine kinases (TK). The vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) is a TK family member and is well known for tumor growth and progression. Therefore, VEGF/VEGFR pathway inhibition is an appealing approach for cancer drug discovery. This review will discuss the structure-based optimization of thienopyrimidines incorporating the aryl urea moiety to develop scaffolds of potent anticancer activity via VEGFR inhibition published between 2013 and 2023. Increasing knowledge of probable scaffolds that can act as VEGFR inhibitors might spur the hunt for novel anticancer medications that are safer, more effective, or both.

Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of novel pyrido-dipyrimidines as dual topoisomerase II/FLT3 inhibitors in leukemia cells.

Dual inhibition of topoisomerase (topo) II and FLT3 kinase, as in the case of C-1311, was shown to overcome the shortcomings of using topo II inhibitors solely. In the present study, we designed and synthesized two series of pyrido-dipyrimidine- and pseudo-pyrido-acridone-containing compounds. The two series were evaluated against topo II and FLT3 as well as the HL-60 promyelocytic leukemia cell line in vitro. Compounds 6, 7, and 20 showed higher potency against topo II than the standard amsacrine (AMSA), whereas compounds 19 and 20 were stronger FLT3 inhibitors than the standard DACA. Compounds 19 and 20 showed to be dual inhibitors of both enzymes. Compounds 6, 7, 19, and 20 were more potent inhibitors of the HL-60 cell line than the standard AMSA. The results of the in vitro DNA flow cytometry analysis assay and Annexin V-FITC apoptosis analysis showed that 19 and 20 induced cell cycle arrest at the G2/M phase, significantly higher total percentage of apoptosis, and late-stage apoptosis in HL-60 cell lines than AMSA. Furthermore, 19 and 20 upregulated several apoptosis biomarkers such as p53, TNFα, caspase 3/7 and increased the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio. These results showed that 19 and 20 deserve further evaluation of their antiproliferative activities, particularly in leukemia. Molecular docking studies were performed for selected compounds against topo II and FLT3 enzymes to investigate their binding patterns. Compound 19 exerted dual fitting inside the active site of both enzymes.

Design and synthesis of thienopyrimidine urea derivatives with potential cytotoxic and pro-apoptotic activity against breast cancer cell line MCF-7.

A series of novel tetrahydrobenzothieno[2,3-d]pyrimidine urea derivatives was synthesized according to fragment-based design strategy. They were evaluated for their anticancer activity against MCF-7 cell line. Three compounds 9c, 9d and 11b showed 1.5-1.03 folds more potent anticancer activity than doxorubicin. In this study, a promising multi-sited enzyme small molecule inhibitor 9c, which showed the most potent anti-proliferative activity, was identified. The anti-proliferative activity of this compound appears to correlate well with its ability to inhibit topoisomerase II (IC50 = 9.29 µM). Moreover, compound 9c showed excellent VEGFR-2 inhibitory activity, at the sub-micromolar level with IC50 value 0.2 µM, which is 2.1 folds more potent than sorafenib. Moreover, activation of damage response pathway of the DNA leads to cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase, accumulation of cells in pre-G1 phase and annexin-V and propidium iodide staining, indicating that cell death proceeds through an apoptotic mechanism. Compound 9c showed potent pro-apoptotic effect through induction of the intrinsic mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis. This mechanistic pathway was confirmed by a significant increase in the expression of the tumor suppressor gene p53, elevation in Bax/BCL-2 ratio and a significant increase in the level of active caspase-3. Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies delivered equations of five 3D descriptors with R2 = 0.814. This QSAR model provides an effective technique for understanding the observed antitumor properties and thus could be adopted for developing effective lead structures.

Design, Synthesis, Cytotoxic Activity and Apoptosis-inducing Action of Novel Cinnoline Derivatives as Anticancer Agents.

AIMS: Tyrosine kinases and topoisomerase I are common target enzymes for the majority of the anticancer agents. In contrast to quinazolines and quinolines, kinase inhibitors and topoisomerase inhibitors incorporating cinnoline scaffold are relatively infrequent. Thus the aim of this work was to replace the former scaffolds with the latter one. Eighteen novel cinnoline derivatives were designed, synthesized and characterized using both microanalytical and spectral data. METHODS: The cytotoxic activity of the new compounds was screened in vitro against both human breast cancer cells and normal breast cells. RESULTS: The enzymatic inhibition activity of promising candidates against both epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase and topoisomerase I was accomplished. CONCLUSIONS: Cell cycle profiles were observed at IC50 doses of representative biologically active compounds. Compound 7 represented a new scaffold incorporating triazepinocinnoline ring system and showed outstanding cytotoxic activity against MCF-7 (0.049 µM), tyrosine kinase inhibition (0.22 µM), apoptosis percentage and the highest selectivity index.

Synthesis, anticancer activity and effects on cell cycle profile and apoptosis of novel thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidine and thieno[3,2-e] triazolo[4,3-c]pyrimidine derivatives.

Motivated by the widely reported anticancer activity of thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidines a series of 24 new 2-substitutedhexahydrocycloocta[4,5] thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidines with different substituents at C-4 position and hexahydrocycloocta[4,5]thieno[3,2-e]-1,2,4-triazolo[4,3-c]pyrimidines were synthesized. The anticancer activity of 17 compounds were evaluated by National Cancer Institute (USA) using a two stage process utilizing 59 different human tumor cell lines representing leukemia, melanoma, cancers of lung, colon, central nervous system (CNS), ovary, kidney, prostate as well as breast. Compound 9c showed broad spectrum potent anticancer activity in nano molar to micro molar range against 56 human tumor cell lines with GI50 less than 10 µM ranging from 0.495 to 5.57 µM, also it is worth mentioning that compound 9c had the marked highest selectivity against the two cell lines T-47D and MDA-MB-468 belonging to breast cancer with GI50 = 0.495 and 0.568 µM respectively, and its effect was further studied on cell cycle progression and induction of apoptosis in the MDA-MB-468 cell line. Results showed that compound 9c induced cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase and also, showed accumulation of cells in pre-G1 phase which may result from, degradation or fragmentation of the genetic materials indicating a possible role of apoptosis in compound 9c-induced cancer cell death and cytotoxicity and verifying this compound as promising selective anticancer lead. Compound 6c was selective against K-562, SR and MOLT-4 cell lines belonging to leukemia showing growth inhibition percentages 86.38, 65.76 and 60.40 at a single dose test, at the same time it showed lethal activity against HOP-92 representing non-small cell lung cancer. Interestingly, leukemia SR, CNS cancer SNB-75 and renal cancer UO-31 cell lines proved to be sensitive to compound 6d with growth inhibition percentages 52.86, 50.94 and 53.99 respectively. Additionally, compound 6d demonstrated lethal activity to HOP-92 belonging non-small cell lung cancer.

Synthesis of novel chromene derivatives of expected antitumor activity.

Inhibition of tubulin polymerization is one of the important tactics in cancer therapy. Since 4-aryl-4H-chromene derivatives are found to be microtubule-binding agents via interfering with tubulin polymerization so we decide to concentrate our exploration efforts on the combination of this nucleus with 5-, 6-, and/or 7-memebered heterocyclic moieties in a novel series of compounds to explore the effect that might result from this combination. Ten novel compounds were selected for anticancer screening assay against MCF-7 breast cancer cell line in comparison to colchicine as positive control and most of them showed excellent activity.

Design, Synthesis, and Antitumor Evaluation of Novel Pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine Derivatives.

A new series of pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidines has been synthesized. The new compounds were tested for their antitumor activity on 60 different cell lines, and some of the compounds were found to have potent antitumor activity. In particular, 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde [1-(4-chlorophenyl)-3-methyl-1H-pyrazolo-[3,4-d]pyrimidin-4-yl]hydrazone (VIIa) was found to be the most effective among the other derivatives, showing IC50 values of 0.326 to 4.31 µM on 57 different cell lines.