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Almost half of all medicines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have been found to be developed based on inspiration from natural products (NPs). Here, we report a novel strategy of scaffold overlaying of scaffold-hopped analogs of bioactive flavones and isoflavones and installation of drug-privileged motifs, which has led to discovery of anticancer agents that surpass the functional efficiency of the original NPs. The analogs, 2,3-diaryl-pyridopyrimidin-4-imine/ones were efficiently synthesized by an approach of a nitrile-stabilized quaternary ammonium ylide as masked synthon and Pd-catalyzed activation-arylation methods. Compared to the NPs, these NP-analogs exhibited differentiated functions; dual inhibition of human topoisomerase-II (hTopo-II) enzyme and tubulin polymerization, and pronounced antiproliferative effect against various cancer cell lines, including numerous drug-resistant cancer cells. The most active compound 5l displayed significant inhibition of migration ability of cancer cells and blocked G1/S phase transition in cell cycle. Compound 5l caused pronounced effect in expression patterns of various key cell cycle regulatory proteins; up-regulation of apoptotic proteins, Bax, Caspase 3 and p53, and down-regulation of apoptosis-inhibiting proteins, BcL-xL, Cyclin D1, Cyclin E1 and NF-κB, which indicates high efficiency of the molecule 5l in apoptosis-signal axis interfering potential. Cheminformatics analysis revealed that 2,3-diaryl-pyridopyrimidin-4-imine/ones occupy a distinctive drug-relevant chemical space that is seldom represented by natural products and good physicochemical, ADMET and pharmacokinetic-relevant profile. Together, the anticancer potential of the investigated analogs was found to be much more efficient compared to the original natural products and two anticancer drugs, Etoposide (hTopo-II inhibitor) and 5-Flurouracile (5-FU)., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Prof. Sankar K. Guchhait reports financial support was provided by Science and Engineering Research Board. Prof. Chanakya Nath Kundu reports financial support was provided by Indian Council of Medical Research. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Natural products as starting templates have shown historically major contribution to development of drugs. Inspired by the structure-function of an anticancer natural alkaloid Rutaecarpine, the Scaffold-hopped Acyclic Analogues of Rutaecarpine (SAAR) with 'N'-atom switch (1°-hop) and ring-opening (2°-hop) were investigated. A new synthetic route was developed for an effective access to the analogues, i.e. 2-indolyl-pyrido[1,2-a]pyrimidinones, which involved preparation of N-Boc-N'-phthaloyltryptamine/mexamine-bromides and pyridopyrmidinon-2-yl triflate, a nickel/palladium-catalysed Ullmann cross-coupling of these bromides and triflate, deprotection of phthalimide followed by N-aroylation, and Boc-deprotection. Fourteen novel SAAR-compounds were prepared, and they showed characteristic antiproliferative activity against various cancer cells. Three most active compounds (11a, 11b, and 11c) exhibited good antiproliferative activity, IC 50 7.7-15.8 µM against human breast adenocarcinoma cells (MCF-7), lung cancer cells (A549), and colon cancer cells (HCT-116). The antiproliferative property was also observed in the colony formation assay. The SAAR compound 11b was found to have superior potency than original natural product Rutaecarpine and an anticancer drug 5-FU in antiproliferative activities with relatively lower cytotoxicity towards normal breast epithelial cells (MCF10A) and significantly higher inhibitory effect on cancer cells' migration. The compound 11b was found to possess favourable in silico physicochemical characteristics (lipophilicity-MLOGP, TPSA, and water solubility-ESOL, and others), bioavailability score, and pharmacokinetic properties (GI absorption, BBB non-permeant, P-gp, and CYP2D6). Interestingly, the compound 11b did not show any medicinal chemistry structural alert of PAINS and Brenk filter. The study represents for the first time the successful discovery of new potent anticancer chemotypes using Rutaecarpine natural alkaloid as starting template and reaffirms the significance of natural product-inspired scaffold-hopping technique in drug discovery research., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare there is no competing interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this research article., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In both academia and the pharmaceutical industry, innovative hypotheses, methodologies and technologies that can shorten the drug research and development, leading to higher success rates, are vital. In this review, we demonstrate how innovative variations of the scaffold-hopping strategy have been used to create new druggable molecular spaces, drugs, clinical candidates, preclinical candidates, and bioactive agents. We also analyze molecular modulations that enabled improvements of the pharmacodynamic (PD), physiochemical, and pharmacokinetic (PK) properties (P3 properties) of the drugs resulting from these scaffold-hopping strategies., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Herein, we report a Pd(0)-catalyzed cascade reaction of intramolecular indolyl isocyanide-insertion, isocyanide-initiated scaffold-rearrangement with indolyl migration and redox-neutral process, which affords an efficient access to indolylisoindolinones. Isocyanide as a C (sp 3 ) H-N synthon and the alkyl motif of isocyanide as a hydride source have been explored for the first time.

A unique reactivity of a nitrile-stabilized quaternary ammonium ylide as a masked C-C[double bond, length as m-dash]N synthon in contrast to its usual sigmatropic rearrangement has been demonstrated. Its reaction with 2-aminopyridine-derived aldimine undergoes electronically-assisted nucleophilic additions and Hofmann elimination, and provides a new method to access fused pyrimidines.

Scaffold-hopping of bioactive natural product aurones has been studied for the first time. 2-Arylideneimidazo[1,2- a ]pyridinones as potential topoisomerase IIα (hTopoIIα)-targeting anticancer compounds were considered. A multifunctional activator, polyphosphoric acid, enabled to realize a cascade reaction of 2-aminopyridine with 2,3-epoxyesters toward synthesis of 2-arylideneimidazo[1,2- a ]pyridinones. Most of the compounds exhibited hTopoIIα-selective poison activity with efficiency more than etoposide and DNA-binding property, while not interacting with hTopo I. The compounds showed pronounced antiproliferative activities in nanomolar range with relatively poor toxicity to normal cells, inhibition of invasiveness, and apoptotic effect. The activities for inhibition of tubulin assembly, CDK1 and pCDK1, were also observed. Interestingly, the hTopoIIα inhibitory (in vitro and ex vivo studies) and antiproliferative activities of representative potent compounds were found to be manifold higher compared to corresponding parent aurones bearing alike substitutions, indicating the importance of such scaffold-hopping strategy in medicinal chemistry research.

A pathway of desilylative activation of TMSCN as a functional isonitrile equivalent, and DABCO-THF as an appropriate system for activation in a chemoselective Strecker-Ugi type reaction, has rendered ethyl glyoxalate and various heterocyclic-2-amidines as feasible substrates, and afforded the successful synthesis of 3-amino-2-carboxyethyl substituted fused imidazoles as useful building blocks. This class of functional scaffold has provided, via construction of the fused pyrimidinone motif, the synthesis of biologically important C8-N9 annulated purines, adenines and their oxo/thio analogs. This new approach is convenient and flexible for the preparation of versatile purine-condensed heterocycles.

(E)- and (Z)-alkenylphosphonates have been prepared stereospecifically via the reaction of vinylboronate esters with triethyl phosphite in the presence of palladium acetate.