Abstract
Ethyl 5-arylpyridopyrimidine-6-carboxylates
3a
–
d
were prepared as a one pot three component reaction via the condensation of different aromatic aldehydes and ethyl acetoacetate with 6-amino-1-benzyluracil
1a
under reflux condition in ethanol. Additionally, condensation of ethyl 2-(2-hydroxybenzylidene) acetoacetate with 6-amino-1-benzyluracil in DMF afforded 6-acetylpyridopyrimidine-7-one
3e
; a facile, operationally, simple and efficient one-pot synthesis of 8-arylxanthines
6a
–
f
is reported by refluxing 5,6-diaminouracil
4
with aromatic aldehydes in DMF. Moreover, 6-aryllumazines
7a
–
d
was obtained via the reaction of 5,6-diaminouracil with the appropriate aromatic aldehydes in triethyl orthoformate under reflux condition. The synthesized compounds were characterized by spectral (
1
H-NMR,
13
C-NMR, IR and mass spectra) and elemental analyses. The newly synthesized compounds were screened for their anticancer activity against lung cancer A549 cell line. Furthermore, a molecular-docking study was employed to determine the possible mode of action of the synthesized compounds against a group of proteins highly implicated in cancer progression, especially lung cancer. Docking results showed that compounds
3b
,
6c
,
6d
,
6e
,
7c
and
7d
were the best potential docked compounds against most of the tested proteins, especially CDK2, Jak2, and DHFR proteins. These results are in agreement with cytotoxicity results, which shed a light on the promising activity of these novel six heterocyclic derivatives for further investigation as potential chemotherapeutics.