Discovery of novel diaryl urea derivatives bearing a triazole moiety as potential antitumor agents.

Herein, we report a novel series of diaryl urea derivatives bearing a triazole moiety, from which potent antitumor agents have been identified. With a modified triazole, most compounds showed high level activity in both cellular and enzymatic assays, accompanied with a suitable ClogD7.4 value. The most active compound, 13i, effectively suppressed proliferation of HT-29, H460 and MDA-MB-231 cancer cells, with IC50 values of 0.90, 0.85 and 1.54 μM, respectively. Compound 13i also exhibited significant inhibition of tyrosine kinases including c-Kit, RET and FLT3. Furthermore, compound 13i could obviously induce apoptosis of HT-29 cells in a concentration-dependent manner. The study of structure-activity relationships also revealed that a hydrophilic tail at the 4-position of the triazole was crucial for high activity of the compound.