Discovery of novel azo pyrimidinone derivatives as B-cell lymphoma-2 inhibitors with potential antineoplastic activity: Synthesis, characterization, in-silico, and in-vitro studies

•A series of novel pyrimidinone derivatives have been synthesized.•The structure of the novel synthesized compounds was confirmed in the basis of melting point, elemental analyses, and spectral data.•All novel compounds were in-silico evaluated for their capability to prevent cancer growth and metastasis.•Compound 4 promoted the best cytotoxic effect on HepG-2 and MCF-7 with IC50 values of 3.84±0.1 and 5.61±0.3 μM, respectively.•Compound 4 obeyed Lipinski's rule of five and might be applied as a promising scaffold for cancer treatment. In the present investigation, novel azo compounds containing pyrimidinone moiety incorporated with different heterocycles were synthesized and characterized using spectroscopic techniques including FT-IR, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, and elemental analysis. These azo derivatives were assessed in- silico to determine how well they could inhibit the antiapoptotic B-cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2) protein while providing information about their pharmacokinetic characteristics. Our results elucidated that the majority of these new compounds demonstrated moderate to strong binding energies against Bcl-2 target protein comparable to that of venetoclax FDA-approved Bcl-2 inhibitor. Compound 4 showed the top-ranked binding energy followed by compound 5 and compound 3 with values equal to -11.65, -9.53, and -7.82 kcal/mol respectively, while compounds 6 and 7 showed moderate binding energies compared with venetoclax drug that give binding energy equal to -6.95 kcal/mol Furthermore, the in-vitro investigations observed that compounds 4, 5 and 3 demonstrated superior anticancer efficacy against HepG2 and MCF-7 compared to venetoclax drug that gives IC50 equal to 5.10±0.54 and 4.17±0.8 μM respectively. Moreover, all newly synthesized compounds had no cytotoxic impact on WI-38 normal cells contrary to venetoclax drug (26.72±0.94 μM) which was confirmed also through ADMES drug-likeness scores study. Additionally, compounds 4, 5, and 3 revealed an efficient antioxidant scavenging capacity towards DPPH free radicals while compounds 6 and 7 showed a weak scavenging effect compared with standard L. ascorbic acid. Ultimately, the newly synthesized pyrimidinone compounds 4, 5, and 3 that were examined showed encouraging apoptotic and antiproliferative properties. Further, in upcoming clinical studies, the newly synthesized pyrimidinone compounds may prove to be effective anticancer medicines. [Display omitted]