6-Bromoquinazoline Derivatives as Potent Anticancer Agents: Synthesis, Cytotoxic Evaluation, and Computational...

A series of 6-bromoquinazoline derivatives (5a-j) were synthesized. Cytotoxic effectiveness of compounds was done against two cancerous cell lines (MCF-7 and SW480) by standard MTT method. Fortunately, all of the compounds showed desirable activity in reducing the viability of the studied cancerous cell lines with IC₅₀ value in the range of 0.53-46.6 μM. Compound 5b with a fluoro substitution at meta position of the phenyl moiety showed stronger activity than cisplatin with IC₅₀ =0.53-1.95 μM. Studies on the hit compound (5b) through apoptosis assay illustrated that it could induce apoptosis in MCF-7 cell lines in dose dependent manner. Molecular docking study was done to investigate the detailed binding modes and interactions with EGFR as a plausible mechanism. The drug- likeness was predicted. To survey the reactivity of compounds, DFT calculation was performed. Taken together, 6-bromoquinazoline derivatives, especially 5b can be considered as hit compounds to rational drug designing as antiproliferative agents.