Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of ring-fused pyrazoloamino pyridine/pyrimidine derivatives as potential FAK inhibitors.

We report herein the synthesis of novel ring-fused pyrazoloamino pyridine/pyrimidine derivatives as potential FAK inhibitors and the evaluation of pharmaceutical activity against five cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231, BXPC-3, NCI-H1975, DU145 and 786O). Generally, the majority of compounds displayed strong anti-FAK enzymatic potencies (IC50 < 1 nM) and could effectively inhibit several class of cancer cell lines within the concentration of 3 μM in comparison with GSK2256098 as a reference. Among them, compound 4o is considered to be the most effective due to high sensitivity in antiproliferation. In culture, 4o could not only inhibit FAK Y397 phosphorylation in MDA-MB-231 cell line, but also trigger apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, computational docking analysis also suggested that 4o and TAE-226 displayed the similar interaction with FAK kinase domain.