New pyrano-pyridine conjugates as potential anticancer agents: design, synthesis and computational studies

New pyrano[3,2-c]pyridine 4a-h, 5-8 and pyrano[2,3-d]pyrimidin 9a,b series were designed and chemically synthesized.

Using the standard drug doxorubicin, the novel chemical entities have been assessed in vitro as potential anticancer prospects on cell lines from liver, breast, colon, and lung cancer along with examining their inhibitory behaviors upon both EGFR and VEGFR-2 kinases.

Compared to erlotinib (IC₅₀ = 0.18 µM), compounds 8a and 8b demonstrated the highest anticancer activity with IC₅₀ Values 0.23 and 0.15 µM, respectively). Further, derivative 8a illustrated encouraging inhibitory characteristics against EGFR and VEGFR-2 (IC₅₀ = 1.21 and 2.65 μM, respectively). A computational study was used to estimate the physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties to afford insightful information about the newly synthesized agents.