The aim of this study was to determine the cytotoxic effect of 3-arylidenechromanone (1) and 3arylideneflavanone (2) on HL-60 and NALM-6 cell lines (two human leukemia cell lines) and a WM-115 melanoma cell line. Both compounds exhibited high cytotoxic activity with higher cytotoxicity exerted by compound 2, for which IC50 values below 10 µM were found for each cell line. For compound 1, the IC50 values were higher than 10 µM for HL-60 and WM-115 cell lines, but IC50 < 10 µM was found for the NALM-6 cell line. Both compounds, at the concentrations close to IC50 (concentration range: 5⁻24 µM/L for compound 1 and 6⁻10 µM/L for compound 2), are not toxic towards red blood cells. The synthesized compounds were characterized using spectroscopic methods ¹H- and 13C-NMR, IR, MS, elemental analysis, and X-ray diffraction. The lipophilicity of both synthesized compounds was determined using an RP-TLC method and the logP values found were compared with the theoretical ones taken from the Molinspiration Cheminformatics (miLogP) software package. The mode of binding of both compounds to human serum albumin was assessed using molecular docking methods.
Keywords: benzoflavanone/chromanone derivatives; crystal structure; cytotoxic effect; erythrotoxicity; synthesis.