Novel amide analogues of quinazoline carboxylate display selective antiproliferative activity and potent EGFR inhibition

In the present study, a novel series of quinazoline derivatives is developed for cancer therapy. All the synthesised analogues were evaluated against a panel of 60 human cancer cell lines for the antiproliferative activity. Significant and selective growth inhibition of several solid tumour cell lines such as NCI-H322M, NCI-H522 (non-small cell lung cancer), IGROV1, SK-OV-3 (ovarian cancer), TK-10 (renal cancer) and MDA-MB-468 (breast cancer) was observed. Further, all the new amide analogues strongly inhibited EGFR in low nanomolar range with morpholino quinazoline 10 producing activity (IC50 = 6.12 nM) comparable to standard drugs erlotinib and gefitinib. In addition, western blot analysis depicted inhibition of phosphorylation of EGFR by compounds 10 and 11 in MDA-MB-468 cells at 10 µM. Molecular docking studies showed the strong binding interactions with the active site of the EGFR protein. The current investigation could be extremely helpful for the development of newer therapeutically useful quinazoline based molecules for cancer therapy.