Benzothiazoles: search for anticancer agents.

Novel derivatives of 2-amino benzothiazoles 4(a-j) have been synthesized and tested for their antitumor activity using National Cancer Institute (NCI) disease oriented antitumor screen protocol against nine panel of cancer cell lines. Among the synthesized compounds, two compounds were granted NSC code and screened at National Cancer Institute (NCI)-USA for anticancer activity at a single high dose (10(-5) M) and five dose in full NCI 60 cell panel. Among the selected compounds, 7-chloro-N-(2,6-dichlorophenyl)benzo[d]thiazol-2-amine (4i) with GI(50) values of 7.18 × 10(-8) M against Non-Small Cell HOP-92 Lung Cancer cell line proved to be the most active members in this study. Virtual screening was carried out through docking the designed compounds into the ATP binding site of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) to predict if these compounds have analogous binding mode to the EGFR inhibitors.