Investigation of Newly Synthesized Fluorinated Isatin-Hydrazones by <i>In Vitro</i> Antiproliferative Activity, Molecular Docking, ADME Analysis, and e-Pharmacophore Modeling

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the <i>in vitro</i> antiproliferative activities and performed computational studies of newly synthesized fluorinated isatin-hydrazones. The chemical structures of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by FT-IR, 1D NMR (¹H- and ¹³C NMR and APT), 2D NMR (HETCOR and HMBC), and elemental analysis. All compounds (<b>1</b>-<b>15</b>) were tested in human lung (A549) and liver (HepG2) cancer cell lines for 72 h. The compounds were screened against a healthy embryonic kidney cell line (HEK-293T) under the same conditions to determine their toxic effects. According to the results obtained, one of the compounds, in particular, compound <b>8</b> was effective at inhibiting the growth of cancerous cells, and its effects on both cancer cell lines were similar to IC₅₀ values of 42.43 and 48.43 μM for A549 and HepG2, respectively. Compound <b>8</b>, which was determined to be the best anticancer agent <i>in vitro</i>, was chosen to interact with the target via molecular docking. This selected ligand (compound <b>8</b>) interacted with the targets 4HJO, 4ASD, 3POZ, and 7TZ7, and docked into the active sites. The docking score, Glide energy, and Glide emodel values were calculated and determined to be lower than those of the reference compound cisplatin. The pharmacokinetic properties, stability, and drug-likeness parameters of all designed compounds were estimated using SwissADME. Finally, the binding affinities of compound <b>8</b> for all four targets were calculated using the MM-GBSA method.