Finding effective and selective anticancer agents is a top medical priority due to high clinical treatment demand. However, current anticancer agents have serious side effects and resistance development remains a big concern. This creates an urgent need for new multitarget drugs that could solve these problems. Tetrahydrocarbazoles and 5-arylidene-4-thiazolinones have always attracted researchers for their multifaced anticancer activities and the possibility to be easily derivatized. Thereby, herein we report the combination of the two scaffolds to provide compounds 9a-j and 10a-j that were fully characterized and their tautomeric form was confirmed by crystal structure. 9a-j and 10a-j were assessed for in vitro antiproliferative activity using SRB assay against a panel of seven human cancer cell lines with doxorubicin as the standard. The results revealed that the cell lines derived from leukemia (Jurkat) and lymphoma (U937) are the most sensitive. Compounds 9d, 10e, 10g, and 10f revealed the highest potency (IC50 = 3.11–11.89 μM) with much lower effects on normal lymphocytes cell line (IC50 > 50 µM). The results show that modifications at 6th position of the THC and the nature of the substituent at the arylidene moiety affect the activity. To exploit the mode of action, 9d, 10e, 10f, and 10g were evaluated as VEGFR-2 and EGFR inhibitors. 10e is the most potent (IC50 0.26 and 0.14 μM) against both enzymes. It also induced G0-G1-phase cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. While 10g exhibited higher potency (IC50 9.95 μM) than vincristine (IC50 15.63 μM) against tubulin. A molecular docking study was carried out to understand the interactions between 10e, 10g and their targets. This study reveals 10e and 10g as possible candidates for developing multitarget anticancer agents against leukemia and lymphoma.
Research Date	
              Research Department	
              
          Research Journal	
              Bioorganic Chemistry 
          Research Publisher	
              Elsevier
          Research Vol	
              153
          Research Website	
              https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045206824007223
          Research Year	
              2024
          Research Member	
          
      Research_Pages
              107817
          Research Abstract