Synthesis, molecular docking, and in-vitro studies of pyrimidine-2-thione derivatives as antineoplastic agents via potential RAS/PI3K/Akt/JNK inhibition in breast carcinoma cells

Abstract In the present investigation, derivatives from (2–6) containing pyrimidine-2-thione moiety incorporated with different heterocycles such as pyrazoline, phenyl pyrazoline, and pyrimidine were synthesized using different methods. These pyrimidine-2-thione derivatives were evaluated in-silico for their capability to inhibit the H-RAS-GTP active form protein with insight to their pharmacokinetics properties. According to our findings, compound 5a was selected for in vitro studies as it has the in-silico top-ranked binding energy. Furthermore, compound 5a induced apoptosis to panels of cancer cell lines with the best IC50 on MCF-7 breast cancer cells (2.617 ± 1.6 µM). This effect was associated with the inhibition of phosphorylated RAS, JNK proteins, and PI3K/Akt genes expression. Thus, compound 5a has upregulated p21 gene and p53 protein levels. Moreover, 5a arrested the cell cycle progression at the sub-G0/G1 phase. In conclusion, the synthesized compound, 5a exhibited potent antineoplastic activity against breast cancer cell growth by targeting RAS/ PI3K/Akt/ JNK signaling cascades.