Synthesis, characterization and biological evaluation of novel dihydropyranoindoles improving the anticancer effects of HDAC inhibitors

The dihydropyranoindole scaffold was identified as a promising target for improving the anti-cancer activity of HDAC inhibitors from the preliminary screening of a library of compounds. A suitable methodology has been developed for the preparation of novel dihydropyranoindoles via the Hemetsberger indole synthesis using azido-phenylacrylates, derived from the reaction of corresponding alkynyl-benzaldehydes with methyl azidoacetate, followed by thermal cyclization in high boiling solvents. Anti-cancer activity of all the newly synthesized compounds was evaluated against the SH-SY5Y and Kelly neuroblastoma cells as well as the MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 breast adenocarcinoma cell lines. Biological studies showed that the tetracyclic systems had significant cytotoxic activity at higher concentration against the neuroblastoma cancer cells. More importantly, these systems, at the lower concentration, considerably enhanced the SAHA toxicity. In addition to that, the toxicity of designated systems on the healthy human cells was found to be significantly less than the cancer cells. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).