Synthesis of Indolyl Pyrazole Scaffolds as Potential Anti-cancer Agents and their Molecular Modelling Studies

Background: Indole and pyrazoles are one of the prime structural units in the field of medicinal chemistry and have been reported to exhibit a variety of biological activities specifically anti-cancer. In view of their medicinal significance, we synthesized a conjugate of the two moieties to get access to newer and potential anti-cancer agents. Methods: Indolyl pyrazoles [3-(1,3-diphenyl-1H-pyrazol-4-yl)-2-(1-methyl-1H-indole-3-carbonyl)acrylonitriles] (4a-1) were synthesized by adopting simple and greener protocol and all the synthesized derivatives were docked against Bcl-2 protein and the selected chemical moieties were screened for their cytotoxicity by using the MTT assay. Results: All the synthesized compounds were docked against BCL-2 protein in order to understand their binding pattern. Among the 12 compounds docked, 4d, 4f, 4h, 4j, and 4l compounds exhibited better protein binding interactions and the same were screened for their anti-cancer activity against A549 (lung) cancer cell lines at a concentration of 100 mu M using Doxorubicin as standard. Substitutions such as N-benzyl, N-ethyl groups and halogen groups such as Br, Cl on indole ring showed moderate activity against A-549 cell lines. Conclusion: Among the 5 indolyl pyrazole derivatives screened, compounds 4h and 4j showed significantly better activity with an IC50 of 33.12 and 34.24 mu M, respectively. Further, structural tweaking of the synthesized new chemical entities may lead to potential hit/lead-like molecules.