Enhancement of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibition by C-C multiple bonds-containing anilinoquinazolines

Design and discovery of 4-anilinoquinazoline-acylamino derivatives as EGFR and VEGFR-2 dual TK inhibitors

Both EGFR and VEGFR-2 are important targets for cancer therapy, the combined inhibition of both EGFR and VEGFR-2 signaling pathway represents a promising approach to the treatment of cancers with a synergistic effect. In this study, a series of novel 4-anilinoquinazoline-acylamino derivatives designed as EGFR and VEGFR-2 dual inhibitors were synthesized and evaluated for biological activities. Most of them exhibited interesting inhibitory potencies against EGFR and VEGFR-2 as well as good antiproliferative activities. Compounds 15a, 15b and 15e exhibited the most potent inhibitory activity against EGFR (IC50 = 0.13 μM, 0.15 μM and 0.69 μM, respectively) and VEGFR-2 (IC50 = 0.56 μM, 1.81 μM and 0.87 μM, respectively), among them, compound 15b showed the highest antiproliferative activities against three cancer cell lines (HT-29, MCF-7 and H460) with IC50 of 5.27 μM, 4.41 μM and 11.95 μM, respectively. Molecular docking established the interaction of 15a with the DFG-out conformation of VEGFR-2, suggesting that they might be type II kinase inhibitors.

Emission tuning of fluorescent kinase inhibitors: conjugation length and substituent effects

Fluorescent N-phenyl-4-aminoquinazoline probes targeting the ATP-binding pocket of the ERBB family of receptor tyrosine kinases are reported. Extension of the aromatic quinazoline core with fluorophore “arms” through substitution at the 6- position of the quinazoline core with phenyl, styryl, and phenylbutadienyl moieties was predicted by means of TD-DFT calculations to produce probes with tunable photoexcitation energies and excited states possessing charge-transfer character. Optical spectroscopy identified several synthesized probes that are nonemissive in aqueous solutions and exhibit emission enhancements in solvents of low polarity, suggesting good performance as turn-on fluorophores. Ligand-induced ERBB2 phosphorylation assays demonstrate that despite chemical modification to the quinazoline core these probes still function as ERBB2 inhibitors in MCF7 cells. Two probes were found to exhibit ERBB2-induced fluorescence, demonstrating the utility of these probes as turn-on, fluoroescent kinase inhibitors.

Discovery of benzimidazole derivatives as novel multi-target EGFR, VEGFR-2 and PDGFR kinase inhibitors

Multi-target EGFR, VEGFR-2 and PDGFR inhibitors are highly useful anticancer agents with improved therapeutic efficacies. In this work, we used two virtual screening methods, support vector machines (SVM) and molecular docking, to identify a novel series of benzimidazole derivatives, 2-aryl benzimidazole compounds, as multi-target EGFR, VEGFR-2 and PDGFR inhibitors. 2-Aryl benzimidazole compounds were synthesized and their biological activities against a tumor cell line HepG-2 and specific kinases were evaluated. Among these compounds, compounds 5a and 5e exhibited high cytotoxicity against HepG-2 cells with IC₅₀ values at ∼2 μM. Further kinase assay study showed that compound 5a have good EGFR inhibitory activity and moderate VEGFR-2 and PDGFR inhibitory activities, while 5e have moderate EGFR inhibitory activity and slightly weaker VEGFR-2 and PDGFR inhibitory activities. Molecular docking analysis suggested that compound 5a more tightly interacts with EGFR and PDGFR than compound 5e. Our study discovered a novel series of benzimidazole derivatives as multi-target EGFR, VEGFR-2 and PDGFR kinases inhibitors.