Synthesis, antiproliferative, and antimicrobial properties of novel phthalimide derivatives

In this research, a series of new phthalimide derivatives with disulfide bonds were designed and synthesized, and their in vitro antiproliferative activities against normal cell lines L929, human cancer cells Hela, MCF-7, and A549 were assessed via the CCK-8 assay. At the same time, in vitro antimicrobial activities of all compounds were evaluated against Gram-negative Escherichia coli and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus . The preliminary bioassay results showed that a series of derivatives of phthalimide 6a–e, 7a–e , 8a–e , and 9a–e exhibited different degrees of antiproliferative activity, and some compounds revealed higher antiproliferative effects than the positive control 5-fluorouracil. Compound 9b (IC 50 = 2.86 μM) exhibited the best proliferation inhibitory activities against A549 cells. It is shown that compounds 6b (IC 50 = 2.94 μM) and 6c (IC 50 = 3.20 μM) exhibited excellent biological activities against Hela cells. Compound 9b (IC 50 = 3.21 μM) displayed the highest antitumor activities against MCF-7 cells. In addition, most of the target compounds had relatively low cytotoxicities against the normal cell line L929. The biological results indicated that all the tested compounds possessed antimicrobial activity with certain degrees against E. coli and S. aureus .