The Anticancer Activities of Some Nitrogen Donor Ligands Containing bis-Pyrazole, Bipyridine, and Phenanthroline Moiety Using Docking Methods

Abstract

The anticancer study of nitrogen-chelating ligands can be of tremendous help in choosing ligands for the anticancer metal complexes design especially with ruthenium(II). The inhibitory anticancer activities of some nitrogen-chelating ligands containing bis-pyrazole, bipyridine, and phenanthroline were studied using experimental screening against cancer cell and theoretical docking methods.In vitroanticancer activities showed compound11as the most promising inhibitor, and the computational docking further indicates its strong inhibitory activities towards some cancer-related receptors. Among the twenty-one modelled ligands, pyrazole-based compounds7,11, and15are the most promising inhibitors against the selected receptors followed by18and21which are derivatives of pyridine and phenanthroline, respectively. The presence of the carboxylic unit in the top five ligands that displayed stronger inhibitory activities against the selected receptors is an indication that the formation of noncovalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding and a strong electron-withdrawing group in these compounds are very important for their receptor interactions. The thermodynamic properties, the polarizabilities, and the LUMO energy of the compounds are in the same patterns as the observed inhibitory activities.