Development of New 5‐(Oxazol‐2‐yl)Pyrimidine Derivatives with Promising Anticancer Activities

Abstract

A novel series of oxazolyl‐pyrimidine derivatives (11 a–j) have been synthesized and structures were confirmed by spectral data. The synthesized compounds were assessed for cytotoxic profile towards human cervix cancer (SiHa), lung cancer (A549), breast cancer (MCF‐7), and colon cancer (Colo‐205) cell lines by employing MTT assay and using etoposide as the positive control. The heteroaryl compounds having the terminal pyridyl (11 a) and thiazolyl (11 b) groups showed superior cytotoxic potency against cervix and lung cancer cell lines and varying methoxy substituted derivatives 11 c–11 e have excellent to good cytotoxic properties. Compound 11 a and 11 b have IC50 values in the range of 0.01±0.0034 to 0.17±0.059 μM and 0.10±0.038 to 0.66±0.077 μM respectively in the tested cell lines. The selected compounds 11 a and 11 b were studied by molecular docking to assess the binding interactions, binding energies, and possible mechanisms. The in‐silico ADME properties were calculated and all the compounds have the desired properties of drug‐like molecules. The toxicity results indicate that all the compounds are free from toxicity except 11 j, which has high tumorigenic properties. The optimized structure, energies of frontier molecular orbitals, molecular electrostatic potential, and NLO parameters for compound 11 a were determined using DFT/B3LYP level with a 6‐311++G(d,p) basis set.