Synthesis, antimicrobial and anticancer activities of some new N-methylsulphonyl and N-benzenesulphonyl-3-indolyl heterocycles

A series of 1-(N-methyl 2a-c and N-benzenesulphonyl-1H-indol-3-yl)-3-aryl-prop-2-ene-1-ones 3a-c were prepared and allowed to react with urea, thiourea or guanidine and gave the pyrimidine derivatives 4a-c to 9a-c. Base catalyzed reaction of 2a-c or 3a-c with ethyl acetoacetate gave cyclohexanone derivatives 10a-c and 11a-c, respectively. Reaction of the latter compounds with hydrazine hydrate afforded indazole derivatives 12a-c and 13a-c, respectively. On the other hand, condensation of 2c or 3c with some hydrazine derivatives namely, hydrazine hydrate, acetyl hydrazine, phenyl hydrazine and benzyl hydrazine hydrochloride gave pyrazole derivatives 14a,b-17a,b, respectively. Moreover, reaction of 2c or 3c with hydroxyl amine hydrochloride gave isoxazole derivatives 18a,b. The newly synthesized compounds were tested for their antimicrobial activity and showed that, compounds 14a, 14b, 15a and 15b were found to be the most active ones of all the tested compounds toward Salmonella typhimurium (ATCC 14,028) compared to the reference drug chloramphenicol. Eighteen new compounds namely, pyrimidin-2(1H)-ones 4a-c and 5a-c, pyrimidin-2(1H)-thiones 6a-c and 7a-c and pyrimidin-2-amines 8a-c and 9a-c were tested for their in vitro cytotoxicity against human liver carcinoma (HEPG2), human breast cancer (MCF7) and human colon cancer (HCT-116) cell lines and showed that, compounds 4c, 5c, 6c, 8c and 9c were found to be the highly active compounds compared to the reference drug doxorubicin. (C) 2012 King Saud University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.