Histone deacetylases (HDACs), especially HDAC1, are attractive targets for anticancer drug design because of their significant role in transcriptional repression and chromatin remodeling. Benzamide groups are widely reported as the most effective zinc binding groups (ZBGs) in design of HDAC inhibitors. Quinolone derivatives, exhibiting various therapeutic effects, are attractive scaffolds for developing novel HDAC inhibitors with potentially supposed therapeutic profiles. To explore the potential of 4-quinolones as a novel scaffold for a cap of HDACis, 14 novel structures were rationally designed and synthesized. Four cancer cell lines (HCT116, HT29, MCF7, and A549) and one normal cell (CHO) were applied to investigate the cytotoxicity of synthesized compounds. Furthermore, the inhibitory activity of the synthesized compounds was analyzed against pan-HDAC isozymes (HDAC1, HDAC2, HDAC3 and HDAC6). Five compounds (5a, 5b, 5c, 5e and 5h) showed strong cytotoxicity and HDAC inhibition even superior to entinostat as the reference drug. Collectively, these results suggest that compounds with an electron-donating group at the positions 6 or 8 of the quinolone ring (cap) appear to enhance the anti-proliferative potency. After performing induce-fit docking (on HDAC1, 2, 3, 6) for all the synthesized compounds, a significant correlation was identified between the MTT results, the inhibitory activity of pan-HDAC, and the docking scores of HDAC1. Therefore, compounds 5e and 5a (the most potent compounds) were identified as the most favorable leads for further investigation of HDAC1-specific enzyme inhibition. Compounds 5a and 5e showed impressive HDAC1 inhibitory potency with IC50 values of 0.48 μM and 0.36 μM, respectively, equal or more than that of Entinostat. Compound 5e (3 µM) also exhibited significant induction of apoptosis in the HCT116 cell line (the percentage of apoptotic cells was 81.87%), even stronger than the reference drug Entinostat (the percentage of apoptotic cells was 37.5%) at the same concentration which is consistent with their antiproliferative activities as well. 100 ns molecular dynamic (MD) simulation revealed that compound 5e can form stable interactions with HDAC1 through coordination with zinc ion, strong hydrophobic interactions and formation of hydrogen bonds. These results suggested that compound 5e can be promising lead for further development of potent anticancer and HDAC inhibitor drugs.
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