Investigating Structural Requirements of Some Pyrimidine-linked Benzimidazole Derivatives as Anticancer Agents Against MCF-7 Cancerous Cell Line Through the use of 2D and 3D QSARs

Cancer is an extremely fast, unrestrained and pathological propagation of cells. Yet there is no cancer treatment that is 100% efficient against scattered cancer. Heterocycles have been considered as a boon to treat several cancers of which pyrimidine is a core nucleus and holds an important place in cancer chemotherapy which is reflected in the use of drugs such as 5-fluorouracil, erlotinib, gefitinib and caneratinib. Also, many good antitumor active agents possess benzimidazoleas its core nucleus. To design novel pyrimidine-linked benzimidazoles and to explore their structural requirements related to anticancer potential. 2D and 3D Quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) studies were carried out on a series of already synthesized 27 pyrimidine-benzimidazole derivatives. Statistically significant and optimum 2D-QSAR model was developed by using step-wise variable multiple linear regression method, yielding correlation coefficient r2 = 0.89, cross-validated squared correlation coefficient q2 = 0.79 and external predictive ability of pred_r2 = 0.73 Best 3D-QSAR model was developed by employing molecular field analysis using step-wise variable k-nearest neighbor method which showed good correlative and predictive abilities in terms of q2 =0.77 and pred_r2= 0.93. These 2D and 3D models were found to give dependable indications which helped to optimize the pyrimidine-benzimidazole derivatives of the data set. The data yielded by 2D- QSAR and 3D-QSAR models will aid in giving better perceptions about structural requirements for developing newer anticancer agents.