Docking studies, antitumor and antioxidant evaluation of newly synthesized porphyrin and metalloporphyrin derivatives

Abstract In this work, we have synthesized a series of novel porphyrin derivatives, 1–5, in high yields. The metal complexes of two of the newly synthesized porphyrin derivatives, 1a–d and 2a–d, have also been synthesized in high yields and characterized. In the synthesis of the new porphyrins and metalloporphrins, we employed our reported strategy in which we utilized N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) as a capping agent in the reaction of pyrrole with different hetero-aryl aldehydes. The new porphyrin derivatives are equipped with different aromatic substituents and hetero-cycles at the peripheral position. The structures of the new compounds were confirmed by elemental and spectral analyses. The geometry and magnetic properties of the new metalloporphyrins 1a–d and 2a–d have also been studied. Antioxidant and cytotoxic activities of the new compounds were evaluated and structure-activity relationships were performed. Porphyrin derivatives 2a and 4 showed exceptional antioxidant activity compared to ascorbic acid as a reference. While the derivatives 2, 3, and 5 exhibited very strong cytotoxic activity against two human cell lines, HePG-2 and MCF-7. Docking for the most promising antioxidant porphyrins, 2a and 4, into the binding active site of antioxidant protein Human Peroxiredoxin (code: 1HD2) has been carried out to detect the degree of recognition antioxidant activity. Molecular docking of the most cytotoxic active porphyrins, 3 and 5, into the biding site of telomerase inhibitor enzyme has been carried out to assess the degree of recognition cytotoxic activity.