Inhibitory effect of coumarin benzoylhydrazones on mcl-1 protein

The protein that controls cell differentiation in acute myeloid leukemia is MCL-1. High-level of this protein causes the carcinogenesis. In this paper inhibitory effect of two coumarin benzoylhydrazones,(E)-2-hydroxy-N’-(1-(2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)ethylidene)benzohydrazide (A) and (E)-4-hydroxy-N’-(1-(2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)ethylidene)benzohydrazide (B) against MCL-1 protein was investigated. For this purpose, a molecular docking simulations were used. The obtained results showed that compound A showed better activity than compound B. Also, the docking simulations against MCL-1 protein were performed for melphalan or (2S)-2-amino- 3-{4-[bis(2-chloroethyl)amino]phenyl}propanoic acid and two 4-chlorocoumarin benzoylhydrazone derivatives, N′-[(E)-(4-chloro-2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)- methylidene]benzohydrazide (4a) and N′-[(E)-(4-chloro-2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)- methylidene]-4-hydroxybenzohydrazide (4b). In this study, melphalan as a chemotherapy drug commonly used in treating multiple myeloma and compounds 4a and 4b as structurally similar compounds with A and B were used as reference compounds. It was shown that these reference compounds exhibited similar activity as compound B. In addition, the potential toxicology of compounds A and B, as well as reference compounds was determined by the ProTox-II webserver. The results revealed that compounds A and B are 3 to 5 times lower toxic than reference compounds.