Unleashing naphthopyranopyrimidine's anticancer potential: a deep eutectic solvent (DES) study

Abstract

A novel, one-pot, three-component coupling (3-CCR) reaction of aromatic aldehydes, β-naphthol, and 6-amino-1,3-dimethyl uracil in a deep eutectic solvent (DES) has been developed as a highly efficient and selective method for the expedient synthesis of the densely functionalized 8,10-dimethyl-12-phenyl-8,12-dihydro-9H-benzo[5,6]chromeno[2,3-d]pyrimidine-9,11(10H)-dione framework in synthetically pleasing yield. The devised protocol adeptly harnesses the versatility of DESs, resulting in a straightforward, cost-effective, resilient, and environmentally sustainable synthetic approach. The resulting cascade adduct exhibits noteworthy antiproliferative activity against a variety of cancer cell lines, thereby showing promise as a potential anticancer drug candidate for breast and hepatocellular carcinoma with moderate to good IC₅₀ values. The most potent compounds in the synthesized library, 4m and 4l, exhibit highly potent cytotoxicity against HepG2 and MCF7 cancer cell lines, with notable IC₅₀ values of 46.39 and 28.21 μM, respectively. The present findings are corroborated by computational and molecular docking studies. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations underscore the pivotal role of the naphthyl ring in orchestrating the success of this intricate domino process in delivering the anticipated scaffolds in reasonable yields.