Synthesis and cytotoxicity evaluation of benzimidazole conjugated amino acid derivatives
Abstract
Benzimidazole and its derivatives displayed diverse biological activities, including antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and particularly anticancer properties . Recent studies also showed that the benzimidazole and amino acid/peptide conjugates displayed potential in designing novel antimicrobial and anticancer agents. In this report, an efficient three-step synthetic method has been successfully developed towards hybrid structures via conjugating amino acids to the benzimidazole framework. Based on this procedure, six novel benzimidazole-amino acid hybrid derivatives have been successfully synthesized in 45 - 80% yields. The structures of these derivatives were fully determined based on spectroscopic data including 1D, 2D-NMR, andHR-ESI-MS. Cytotoxicity assays indicated that compounds 7a and 7c possessed moderate to rather good cytotoxicities towards three cancer cell lines including lung cancer, cervical cancer, and breast cancer. Notedly, compound 7c (IC 50 = 18.88 μM) with the L -phenylalanine ethyl ester moiety displayed good cytotoxicity on the breast cancer cell line.