A focused array of green imidazolium ionic liquids (ILs) encompassing benzothiazole ring and amide linkage were designed and synthesized using quaternization and metathesis protocols. The synthesized ILs have been fully characterized by usual spectroscopic methods and screened for their anticancer activities against human cancer cell lines originating from breast and colon cancers. Collectively, our biological data demonstrate that the newly synthesized series has variable anticancer activities in the examined cancer types. The synthesized ILs 8, 10 and 21-29 comprising the methyl and methyl sulfonyl benzothiazole ring emerged as the most potent compounds with promising antiproliferative activities relative to their benzothiazole ring counterparts. Furthermore, the mechanism underlying the observed anticancer activity was investigated. The most active compound 22 appears to exert its anticancer effect through apoptosis dependent pathway in breast cancer cells. Interestingly, compound 22 has also shown good in silico absorption (81.75%) along with high gastro-intestinal absorption as per ADME predictions.
Keywords: ADME; anticancer; benzothiazole; imidazole; ionic liquids.