Synthesis, Characterization, and In Vitro Anticancer Studies of New 1,8-Naphthyridine Substituted Schiff Base Derivatives and Their Molecular Docking

The present study explores the potential applications of 1,8-naphthyridine Schiff base derivatives in chemotherapeutic treatment and highlights significant recent progress in the synthesis of 1,8-naphthyridines as antitumor analogues. Through the condensation of 1,8-naphthyridine-2-carboxaldehyde with different substituted primary amines, the synthesis of Schiff bases containing 1,8-naphthyridine moiety was successfully achieved. These 1,8-naphthyridine Schiff base derivatives exhibited the most favorable binding energies on the EGFR tyrosine kinase (PDB ID: 4HJO), and the amino acid residues that were relevant to this demonstrated the greatest contribution to enhancing their effectiveness against this protein. The newly synthesized compounds are exhibited promising docking activity. We screened all the new compounds for their potential as anticancer agents against MCF-7 cancer cell lines using the MTT assay. Notably, (E)-N-[(1,8-naphthyridin-7-yl)methylene]-4-(trifluoromethoxy)benzenamine exhibited best anticancer activity among the synthesized compounds.