Design, synthesis and in silico insights of new 7,8-disubstituted-1,3-dimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione derivatives with potent anticancer and multi-kinase inhibitory activities

Abstract

Aiming to obtain an efficient anti-proliferative activity, structure- and ligand-based drug design approaches were expanded and utilized to design and refine a small compound library. Subsequently, thirty-two 7,8-disubstituted-1,3-dimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione derivatives were selected for synthesis based on the characteristic pharmacophoric features required for PI3K and B-Raf oncogenes inhibition. All the synthesized compounds were evaluated for their in vitro anticancer activity. Compounds 17 and 22c displayed an acceptable potent activity according to the DTP-NCI and were further evaluated in the NCI five doses assay. To validate our design, compounds with the highest mean growth inhibition percent were screened against the target PI3Kα and B-RafV600E to confirm their multi-kinase activity. The tested compounds showed promising multi-kinase activity. Compounds 17 and 22c anticancer effectiveness and multi-kinase activity against PI3Kα and B-RafV600E were consolidated by the inhibition of B-RafWT, EGFR and VEGFR-2 with IC50 in the sub-micromolar range. Further investigations on the most potent compounds 17 and 22c were carried out by studying their safety on normal cell line, in silico profiling and predicted ADME characteristics.