The College of Pharmacy discussed the MSc thesis entitled “In Silico Studies, Synthesis and Preliminary Cytotoxicity Evaluation of New 5-(pyridin-3-yl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole Derivatives” by the student Ahmed Nasser Abdulhussein and the supervisor, Lecturer Dr. Mohammed Abdulameer Oleiwi, at the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department.
The study aimed to design and synthesize a new series of oxadiazole derivatives targeting and inhibiting Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-2 (VEGFR-2), as inhibition of this receptor represents an effective therapeutic strategy for suppressing tumor angiogenesis and treating colorectal and renal cancers.
The study included computer-aided drug design using molecular docking and 100-nanosecond molecular dynamics simulation to evaluate the binding affinity of the designed compounds toward the target receptor. The final compounds were chemically synthesized as two series, namely N-acyl hydrazone and diacylhydrazine derivatives, and their chemical structures were confirmed. The synthesized compounds were subsequently evaluated for their cytotoxic activity using the MTT cell viability assay against colorectal cancer (HT-29) and renal cancer (ACHN) cell lines, as well as normal fibroblast cells (L929) to assess selectivity, with sorafenib used as the reference drug.
The results showed that the synthesized compounds exhibited variable yet promising inhibitory activity against both colorectal and renal cancer cell lines. Structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies, together with molecular docking results, revealed that several compounds displayed anticancer activity comparable to that of the reference drug sorafenib, while showing good selectivity and lower cytotoxicity toward normal cells.
The study recommends conducting further direct enzymatic assays to confirm the mechanism of VEGFR-2 inhibition, expanding the biological evaluation to include additional cancer cell lines, and performing pharmacokinetic and in vivo studies to comprehensively assess the anticancer potential of the synthesized compounds.
