Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidine derivatives as new antiproliferative agents with multikinase inhibitory activity

Abstract

Two series of triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidines were designed and synthesized as antiproliferative agents targeting multi kinase inhibition aiming to increase potency and combat drug resistance. The synthesized compounds were tested for their antiproliferative activity. The triazolopyrimidine derivatives 9b, 9c, 12b and 12c showed promising anticancer activities, in particular, compounds 12b and 12c displayed broad spectrum antiproliferative potential against NCI cancer cell lines with GI50 mean value of 10.63 μM and 3.51 μM, respectively. Also, the targeted compounds 9b, 9c, 12b and 12c showed non-significant cytotoxic effect against human normal breast epithelial (MCF-10) cell line. Moreover, the triazolopyrimidine derivatives 9b, 9c and 12b-e were evaluated as multikinase inhibitors against TrkA, CDK2, VEGFR2 and EGFR. Compound 12b showed the most potent multikinase inhibition with IC50 values of 2.19 μM, 2.95 μM, 3.49 μM and 9.31 μM for EGFR, VEGFR2, TrKA and CDK2, respectively. Compound 12b was further investigated their inhibitory activities against 4 kinases (CDK5, AKT1, GSK3β and FAK) to determine their selectivity profile. It showed moderate activity against FAK with IC50 value of 6.3 μM. On the other hand, Compounds 9b, 12b, 12d and 12e were more selective towards EGFR and VEGFR2 with IC50 values ranging from 2.19-7.00 μM and 2.95-8.21 μM, respectively. The most active anti-proliferative agents 12b and 12c dramatically boosted cell accumulation at G2/M phase while decreasing G0-G1 and S phase populations in treated breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells. Finally, molecular modeling was performed on compounds 12b, 12d and 12e to explain the distinct binding modes inside the active site of TrkA, CDK2, VEGFR2 and EGFR. Moreover, molecular dynamics simulations for 100 ns for 12b docking pose and relevant references confirmed a stable binding to EGFR and VEGFR2.