Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Indolyl Bis-chalcones as Anti-Breast Cancer and Antioxidant Agents

A series of novel α-cyano substituted indolyl bis-chalcones (3a−l) has been synthesized and evaluated for their in vitro antitumor activity against the human breast cancer MCF7 (estrogen receptor-positive) and normal Vero cell lines using sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay method. Compounds 3a, 3c and 3d showed potent activity (GI50 = 11.7, 15.3 and 17.9 µM respectively) against the human breast cancer MCF7 cell line, which was almost as good as that of adriamycin (GI50 = < 0.1 µM) whereas, screening against the normal Vero Monkey cell line showed moderate selectivity. Furthermore, all the synthesized compounds screened for their antioxidant potential against DPPH, NO, SOR, and H2O2 radicals. Most of the bis-chalcones exhibited significant DPPH (51.09−12.72 %) and NO (64.11−34.43 %) radical scavenging activity and modest activity against SOR (88.08−43.14 %) and H2O2 (80.13−56.0 %) radicals compared to the reference standard ascorbic acid (40.78 %, 42.63 %, 87.05 %, and 79.42 % respectively). Current study provides impetus for the development of highly potent indolyl bis-chalcone derivatives as anticancer leads. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License