The College of Pharmacy discussed the MSc thesis entitled “In silico study, Synthesis and Preliminary Cytotoxicity Evaluation of New Compounds Derived from (3,4,5)-Trimethoxyphenyl Acetic Acid” by the student Mahmoud Akram Mohammed, and the supervisor Lecturer Dr. Mohammed Abdulameer at the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department.
The study aimed to design ,synthesize novel Schiff base and 1,3,4-oxadiazole derivatives containing a trimethoxyphenyl group ,evaluating their preliminary cytotoxicity as potential candidates for targeting the colchicine-binding site of tubulin.
The study included the synthesis of eight final compounds , confirmation of their structures using spectroscopic techniques. computational studies, prediction of pharmacological properties, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted. The cytotoxicity of the synthesized compounds was evaluated using the MTT assay against human cervical cancer HeLa cells, breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells, normal L929 fibroblast cells to assess their cellular activity and selectivity toward cancer cells compared with normal cells.
The results showed that compound TA4 exhibited the highest activity against HeLa cells, with an IC₅₀ value of 22.44 μM, compared with 102.5 μM for the reference compound CA-4, with no detectable toxicity toward L929 cells under the tested conditions. Compound TA3 showed activity against MDA-MB-231 cells; however, this activity was accompanied by toxicity toward normal cells, indicating limited selectivity. Overall, these findings indicate differences in the cytotoxic activity and selectivity among the synthesized compounds, with TA4 emerging as the most promising compound among the tested derivatives, warranting further studies to investigate its activity, mechanism of action, selectivity in greater depth.
The study recommended further structural optimization of compound TA4, expanding the evaluation to include additional cancer cell lines, conducting tubulin polymerization and cell-cycle assays to confirm its mechanism of action, as well as evaluating its pharmacokinetics, toxicity, antitumor efficacy in animal studies.
