Design, Synthesis, and Biological Evaluation of Tryptanthrin Alkaloids as Potential anti-Diabetic and Anticancer Agents

Abstract

An efficient green chemical approach has been reported to synthesize tryptanthrin alkaloids, utilizing isatin and isatoic anhydride as a substrate in the presence of tetrabutylammonium salt-based ionic liquids (TBA-ILs) as catalyst and reaction medium under microwave conditions (MWs). The reaction proceeds evenly under mild conditions to provide the bioactive natural product tryptanthrins in excellent yields. Besides, the molecular docking studies show that all the synthesized scaffolds exhibit potential binding affinities toward α-amylase, α-glucosidase ligands, GLP-1, and EGFR receptors; the in-vitro α-amylase and α-glucosidase assays show positive inhibition. In addition, the in vitro anticancer activity against A-549 non-small lung cancer (NSLC) cell lines leads to excellent inhibition. The present findings show the therapeutic potential of the tryptanthrins for targeting antidiabetic and anticancer activities.

Keywords:

• Tryptanthrin
• tetrabutylammonium-salts
• ionic liquids
• MW-synthesis
• VOCs free approach

Acknowledgments

Thankful to Sophisticated instrumentation facility, SIF-VIT for providing NMR, GC-MS FT-IR, and other facilities.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.