Novel imidazole-based combretastatin A-4 analogues: evaluation of their in vitro antitumor activity and molecular modeling study of their binding to the colchicine site of tubulin.

The in vitro antitumor activity of novel combretastatin-like 1,5- and 1,2-diaryl-1H-imidazoles was evaluated against the NCI 60 human tumor cell lines panel. Compounds 2d and 2g proved to be more cytotoxic than CA-4 in tests involving their evaluation over a 10(-4)-10(-8) range. Docking experiments showed a good correlation between the MG_MID Log GI(50) values of all these compounds and their calculated interaction energies with the colchicine binding site of alphabeta-tubulin.