Synthesis and anticancer activity of cinnoline sulphonamides and 4-heteroyclic derivatives: Cross-coupling approach

A series of novel cinnoline sulphonamide derivatives and 4-substuted cinnoline derivatives (13a-h, 16a-h and 17–31 total 33 analogues) were designed based on scaffold hopping techniques and evaluated for their antileukemic activity on wild type K562 as well as imatinib resistant cell lines (K562-IR1 and K562-IR2). Out of 33 analogues, five compounds (19, 22, 23, 28, and 31) exhibited potent antileukemic activity. An easy and efficient approach to synthesize numerous cinnoline derivatives by the various cross-coupling reactions of 4-chlorocinnoline has been developed and also demonstrated that metal-free cross couplings give high product yield compared with metal catalyzed cross couplings.