New pyrazolopyrimidine derivatives with anticancer activity: Design, synthesis, PIM-1 inhibition, molecular docking study and molecular dynamics.

Abstract In this study, new pyrazolopyrimidine derivatives were designed and evaluated for anticancer activity. PIM-1 inhibitiory activity were measured for the most potent compounds. Molecular docking study and molecular dynamics were also done. Thus, the novel derivatives of pyrazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidine have been synthesized and characterized using different spectroscopic techniques. HMBC and NOESY experiments were used to confirm regiospecific structure of pyrimidine ring. The newly synthesized derivatives were evaluated for their antitumor activities against HCT-116 and MCF-7 cell lines. These derivatives showed clear in vitro antitumor activities. Compound 5h showed the highest bioactivity (IC50 = 1.51 µM) against HCT-116 cell line. While, compound 6c was the most potent derivative, its IC50 was 7.68 µM against MCF-7 cell line. Compounds 5c, 5g, 5h, 6a and 6c showed PIM-1 inhibitory activity with IC50 of 1.26, 0.95, 0.60, 1.82, 0.67, respectively µM that could be correlated with their cytotoxic effect. Molecular docking study was done to predict the mode of binding of the target compounds inside PIM-1 active site. The molecular dynamic simulation was conducted in order to evaluate stability of binding of the tested compounds.