Synthesis, pharmacological evaluation, and molecular modeling studies of novel isatin hybrids as potential anticancer agents

A novel series of isatin hybrids 5a-g was designed, synthesized, and characterized spec-troscopically. The synthesized compounds were evaluated for their cytotoxic activity against the human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) by in vitro MTT assay. Amongst the tested compounds, 5e compound bearing benzyl moiety at N4 piperazine was found to be the most active with the promising IC50 (12.47 mM). Moreover, the active compounds 5e and 5g were subjected to antitumor evaluation (in vivo) against Dalton's ascitic lymphoma (DAL) cell line and the results suggested that the best active compound 5e can normalize the blood picture in comparison to the standard drug. An in silico molecular docking study using the crystal structure of Hsp90 protein described the role of significant protein-ligand interactions and revealed more insights into the binding mode. The drug-likeliness of the compounds was predicted based on Lipinski's rule of five and pharmacoki-netic ADME parameters. Hence, the synthesized isatin hybrids could be novel starting point anti-cancer lead compounds demonstrating drug-like properties which can be explored further for anticancer drug discovery.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).