Anticancer Activity-Structure Relationship of Quinolinone-Based Compounds: An Overview

Background: Heterocyclic compounds play an important role in the pharmaceutical and biological processes. Among all heterocycles, quinolinone/quinoline has one of the most unique structures in the discovery of these compounds. These derivatives have been prepared by various on the structures, positions, and they have attracted a great deal of attention in the field of medicinal chemistry. The great interest to medicinal chemists is the basic scaffold of the fused quinolines derivative. The large road maps of gene and protein expression produced by these methods often can be used to classify cancers or predict responses to certain types of treatments targeting regulated at both the level of transcription and translation and at the level of enzyme activity. These specific regulations may open the door for the discovery of novel drug candidates including an anti-cancer target. Objective: This review will attempt to provide a comprehensive description of different quinolinone derivatives especially by concentrating on compounds containing benzimidazole ring. Quinolones moieties are experimentally proven anticancer pharmacophores. We think these pharmacophore and additional substitutions on these scaffolds would further enhance their activity as anticancer agents. This activity associate with the positioning of these different functional groups, such as fluoro, methoxy, methyl, amino, hydroxy, nitro, bromo, chloro, methylamino, ethoxy, carbonyl, iodo, and trifluoromethyl groups. Among the functional groups, most of the electronwithdrawing groups such as fluoro, chloro, nitro, amino, and carbonyl groups showed stronger activity than those with electron-donating groups such as methyl and methoxy groups. Presence of electron-withdrawing or electron-donating group by varying the quinolinone redox properties affect its capacity of DNA synthesis. Conclusion: The structural motifs attributed to noteworthy inhibitory results have been identified and highlighted in order to encourage further research and develop more efficient. This work to aim to present knowledge and it hoped that this review can be help researchers to explore an interesting quinoline class, and researchers will be able to develop a new vision in the search for rational designs of more powerful, active and less toxic quinoline-based anticancer drugs.