An efficient one-pot three-component synthesis of 2-(4-(2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)thiazol-2-yl)-3-arylacrylonitriles and their cytotoxic activity evaluation with molecular docking

A facile, convenient and one-pot three-component method has been outlined for the synthesis of title compounds by treating equimolar amounts of 3-(2-bromoacetyl)-2H-chromen-2-one (2) with 2-cyanothioacetamide (3) and various aryl/heteryl aldehydes (5 or 7) independently. The effect of solvent and catalyst on this one-pot reaction has been studied and the use of l-proline in ethanol was found to be effective to achieve the target compounds (6 & 8) in fair yields. These synthesized compounds were further assessed for the anti-hepatoma activity, and their action mechanism was also investigated by using molecular docking studies. All the compounds 6(a-h) & 8(a-f) manifested excellent potency for anti-hepatoma activity. It should be noted that, compounds 6e, 6f have exhibited almost equipotent activity with reference to standard drug Nexavar.