Design, synthesis and antitumor evaluation of novel quinazoline analogs in hepatocellular carcinoma cell

•Five kinds of novel quinazoline analogs were designed by scaffold shopping and synthesized.•Compound D2 (IC50 = 4.06 µM) showed higher anti-HCC activity than sorafenib (IC50 = 6.14 µM).•D2 may inhibit cell proliferation, migration and induce apoptosis through AKT/mTOR signaling pathway and the mitochondrial death pathway.•Molecular docking analysis further supported that D2 showed a high affinity to mTOR kinase.