Theoretical studies on QSAR and mechanism of 2‐indolinone derivatives as tubulin inhibitors

The theoretical studies on three‐dimensional quantitative structure activity relationship (3D‐QSAR) and action mechanism of a series of 2‐indolinone derivatives as tubulin inhibitors against human breast cancer cell line MDA‐MB‐231 have been carried out. The established 3D‐QSAR model from the comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) shows not only significant statistical quality but also predictive ability, with high correlation coefficient (R² = 0.986) and cross‐validation coefficient (q² = 0.683). In particular, the appropriate binding orientations and conformations of these 2‐indolinone derivatives interacting with tubulin are located by docking study, and it is very interesting to find that the plot of the energy scores of these compounds in DOCK versus the corresponding experimental pIC₅₀ values exhibits a considerable linear correlation. Therefore, the inhibition mechanism that 2‐indolinone derivatives were regarded as tubulin inhibitors can be theoretically confirmed. Based on such an inhibition mechanism along with 3D‐QSAR results, some important factors improving the activities of these compounds were discussed in detail. These factors can be summarized as follows: the H atom adopted as substituent R₁, the substituent R₂ with higher electropositivity and smaller bulk, the substituents R₄–R₆ (on the phenyl ring) with higher electropositivity and larger bulk, and so on. These results can offer useful theoretical references for understanding the action mechanism, designing more potent inhibitors, and predicting their activities prior to synthesis. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2009