Dihydropyrazole Derivatives Act as Potent α-Amylase Inhibitors and Free Radical Scavengers: Synthesis, Bioactivity Evaluation, Structure–Activity Relationship, ADMET, and Molecular Docking Studies

Dihydropyrazole (1-22) derivatives were synthesized from already synthesized chalcones. The structures of all of the synthesized compounds were confirmed by elemental analysis and various spectroscopic techniques. Furthermore, the synthesized compounds were screened against α amylase as well as investigated for antioxidant activities. The synthesized compounds demonstrate good to excellent antioxidant activities with IC50 values ranging between 30.03 and 913.58 μM. Among the 22 evaluated compounds, 11 compounds exhibit excellent activity relative to the standard ascorbic acid IC50 = 287.30 μM. Interestingly, all of the evaluated compounds show good to excellent α amylase activity with IC50 values lying in the range between 0.5509 and 810.73 μM as compared to the standard acarbose IC50 = 73.12 μM. Among the investigated compounds, five compounds demonstrate better activity compared to the standard. In order to investigate the binding interactions of the evaluated compounds with amylase protein, molecular docking studies were conducted, which show an excellent docking score as compared to the standard. Furthermore, the physiochemical properties, drug likeness, and ADMET were investigated, and it was found that none of the compounds violate Lipiniski's rule of five, which shows that this class of compounds has enough potential to be used as a drug candidate in the near future.