A series of novel 2-(2-cyanophenyl)-N-phenylacetamide derivatives 3(a-u) were designed and synthesized via selective amidation of methyl-2-(2-cyanophenyl)acetates over amidine formation by using AlMe3 as catalyst in good yields. All the newly synthesized derivatives were well characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, FTIR and HRMS spectral techniques. All the synthesized title compounds were evaluated for their in vitro anticancer activity against three cancer cell lines. Among all compounds, 3i (IC50?=?1.20 μM, IC50?=?1.10 μM), 3j (IC50?=?0.11 μM, IC50?=?0.18 μM), 3o (IC50?=?0.98 μM, IC50?=?2.76 μM) showed excellent inhibitory activity than the standard Etoposide (IC50?=?2.11 μM, IC50?=?3.08 μM) against MCF-7 and A-549 cell lines, respectively. Docking analysis of all the compounds with the human topoisomerase II revealed that the compound 3j fitted well in the active site pocket, showing the best docking score of 158.072 kcal/mol.
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