Phloroglucinol derivatives as anti-tumor agents: synthesis, biological activity evaluation and molecular docking studies

Phloroglucinol compounds isolated from Dryopteris fragrans (L.) Schott showed a variety of biological activities, such as anticancer and anti-inflammatory. In this study, we have made a number of modifications around the scaffold of phloroglucinol and synthesized phloroglucinol derivatives A1–A9, B1–B9 , and C1–C3 . We synthesized these compounds and investigated their effect on four human cancer cell lines (A-549, MCF-7, Hela, HepG2 cell lines) via MTT assay in vitro. The results revealed that all compounds exhibited certain antiproliferative activities on cancer cell lines and excellent inhibitory effects on MCF-7, in which compound C2 was the best with the IC 50 value of 18.49 μM, exceeding that of 5-fluorouracil. Moreover, the cell apoptosis test showed that compound C2 induced apoptosis in a concentration-dependent manner. Furthermore, the results of molecular docking analysis explained the probable interaction between the active compounds and active sites of target protein 4I22 and 1OG5.