Design, Synthesis and Anticancer Evaluation of Novel Series of Indibulin Analogues

Background: Cancer is an important cause of human death worldwide. During the last decades, many anticancer agents with anti-tubulin mechanism have been synthesized or extracted from nature and some of them also entered clinical use. Indibulin is one of the most potent tubulin polymerization inhibitors with minimal peripheral neuropathy, which is a big problem by some of the antimitotic agents such as taxanes and vinka alkaloids. With respect to this giant benefit, herein we decided to design and synthesize novel indibulin related compounds and investigate their anticancer activity against HT-29, Caco-2 and T47-D cancerous cell lines as well as NIH-T3T as normal cell line. Objective: The aim of this study was to synthesize new anti-cancer agents and evaluates their cytotoxic activity on diverse cancerous and normal cell lines. Method: Target compounds were synthesized in multistep reaction and cytotoxic activity was investigated by MTT cell viability assay. Results: Herein, nine novel target compounds were synthesized in moderate to good yield. Some of the compounds exerted good cytotoxic activity against cancerous cell lines. Annexin V/PI staining showed that compound 4g could induce apoptosis and necrosis in HT-29 cell line. Conclusion: It is valuable to do further investigation on compound 4g which showed the highest activity against HT-29 and Caco-2 (IC50 values are 6.9 and 7 μM respectively). Also, synthesis of new derivatives of current synthesized compounds is suggested.