Design, synthesis and assessment of new series of quinazolinone derivatives as EGFR inhibitors along with their cytotoxic evaluation against MCF7 and A549 cancer cell lines.

New acetamide (IV a-e) and 1,3-thiazolidinone derivatives (VII a-e) were designed, synthesized and assessed for their cytotoxic activity against MCF-7 and A549 cell lines along with their lead compounds (erlotinib and gefitinib). The newly designed compounds were prepared according to the adopted procedures in schemes 1 and 2 from their quinazolinone parents. 3D QSAR pharmacophore and docking molecular modeling protocols were conducted using Discovery Studio program, beside a full biological assay for these compounds. The cytotoxicity evaluation demonstrated that compounds IVb, IVc, VIIa, VIIb, VIId exhibited potent cytotoxic activities against both MCF-7 and A549 cell lines. Moreover, the molecular modeling studies corroborated to the affinity of the compounds towards EGFR. Consequently, these five compounds were then screened for their EGFR inhibition and evaluated as well for their toxicity to normal cells, which revealed that the acetamide derivative IVc and the thiazolidinone derivative VIIa were the most potent and least toxic. DNA flow cytometry analysis was conducted for compounds IVc and VIIa, which indicated that they both induced arrest at G2/M phase of the cell cycle.