Novel dihydrobenzofuran derivatives: design, synthesis, cytotoxic activity, apoptosis, molecular modelling and DNA binding studies.

Pyrazoline derivatives (3a-3e) and (4a-4e) were designed and synthesized through chalcones (2a-2e) cyclization with NH2NH2/HCOOH and NH2CSNHNH2/CH3COOH, respectively. The molecular structures were elucidated by using various techniques such as UV-visible, FT-IR, 1H, 13C NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. The purity of all synthesized compounds was checked by the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Single X-ray crystallography was confirmed the molecular structure of analogs (2d, 3e and 4e). Anticancer activity of the all derivatives was screened against human cancer cell MCF-7 and HepG2 cell lines by MTT assay. The results of anticancer activity of novel analogs 2b, 3b and 3e exhibited promising activity against MCF-7 but low toxic against the HepG2 normal cell line. By using a flow cytometry-based technique, the anticancer effectiveness of potent compounds against the MCF-7 cancer cell line was further validated. DNA binding interactions of the novel analogs 3b and 3e were carried out with calf thymus DNA (Ct-DNA) using absorption, fluorescence, circular dichroism and cyclic voltammetry. In silico molecular modelling of pyrazoline derivatives were also studied using Schrödinger-Maestro v2021-2 against tyrosine kinase receptor with PDB ID: 1M17 to explore their best hits. The 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical was used to measure the antioxidant capacity of active pyrazoline derivatives. Using Swiss ADMET software, the ADMET characteristics of pyrazoline derivatives were also investigated.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.