The Faculty of Pharmacy discussed the PhD dissertation entitled “Molecular Modeling, Synthesis, and Evaluation of Cytotoxicity of New Sulfonamide Derivatives as Possible Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors” by Ammar Abdul Aziz Abdul Sahib and his supervisor, Assistant Professor Dr. Mohamed Hassan Mohamed in the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department. The study aimed to design compounds that act as inhibitors of the histone deacetylase enzyme, using molecular docking programs to design the compounds and test them in silico before manufacturing them. A specific form of the histone deacetylase enzyme was chosen, and several different compounds were prepared using sulfonamide as groups to bind to the zinc ion and isatin and coumarin derivatives as cap groups, and the molecular docking of these compounds was tested. It was noted that the sulfonamide group has the ability to bind to the zinc molecule, which is important for the work of histone deacetylase, and thus inhibit its work. Compounds containing sulfonamide were manufactured as a binding group for zinc, which is considered important in inhibiting the action of the histone deacetylase enzyme. The compounds were synthesized using several chemical methods, and the reaction was followed using thin-layer chromatography to ensure that the reactions were complete. The final compounds were examined using infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry. The results showed good agreement with the compounds that were prepared. The cytotoxic activity was evaluated by examining the effectiveness of inhibiting the proliferation of liver and breast cancer cells, and preliminary results showed high drug effectiveness for some of the manufactured compounds compared to the cytotoxic activity of the standard compound, Vorinostat.
