Design, synthesis, biological screenings and docking simulations of novel carvacrol and thymol derivatives containing acetohydrazone linkage

Abstract

Carvacrol and thymol are well-known phenolic monoterpenoids present as functional ingredients in numerous products. Keeping the diverse therapeutic activities of phenolic monoterpenes in mind, we attempted to synthesize a new series of acetohydrazone linkage containing carvacrol and thymol derivatives. All synthesized derivatives were characterized by spectroscopic techniques. Finally, all the derivatives were screened for their anti-oxidant activities by using DPPH assay, and anticancer activities by using SRB assay against pancreatic cancer with the MIAPaCa-2 cell line and colon cancer with the HCT-15 cell line. Themolecular docking studies of all the synthesized derivatives were carried out on the cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) protein enzyme. In the anti-oxidant test, EC50 values of all the compounds showed excellent anti-oxidant potency, and similarly the values of GI50 in the anticancer test displayed that most of the compounds possess good anticancer potency. Total docking results suggested that all the synthesized compounds exhibit good binding affinity towards receptors.