Microwaves assisted synthesis of antitumor agents of novel azoles, azines, and azoloazines pendant to phenyl sulfone moiety and molecular docking for VEGFR-2 kinase

The present research article contains two valuable starting phenylsulfone-enaminones which were synthesized in short reaction time with excellent yield under microwaves irradiation. These two enaminones were reacted with both nucleophiles and electrophiles to afford novel heterocycles bearing phenylsulfone moiety. The structure of all prepared phenylsulfone derivatives as well as their mechanistic pathways were studied based on their spectral data. Moreover, seventeen phenylsulfone derivatives were screened in vitro for their anticancer activity against HepG-2 and HCT-116 cell lines. Compounds 4 and 7a were equipotent to doxorubicin against HepG-2 cell line. Moreover, diphenyl sulfone derivative 7a was 3-fold more potent than doxorubicin against human colon cancer cell line with IC50 = 3.13 and 9.4 mu g/mL, respectively. Remarkably, compound 7b was 2-fold more active than doxorubicin against the two tested cell lines. A docking study of title compounds into VEGFR-2 kinase was also conducted. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.