Synthesis of novel β-amino alcohols from phenylacetylcarbinol: cytotoxicity activity against A549 cells and molecular docking

Synthesis of novel β-amino alcohols 7a–d and 9a–d have been disclosed by in situ formation of Schiff base from phenylacetylcarbinol 1 (PAC), followed by Grignard reaction. An optimized synthetic method has been reported to obtain chemically pure β-amino alcohols with excellent yield. The structures of the obtained compounds were confirmed using spectral techniques such as IR, NMR and Mass. The compounds obtained were screened for their cytotoxicity activity against A549 cancer cells and significant cytotoxicity properties were found for all the tested compounds. Interestingly, potent cytotoxicity properties were found for compounds 7b and 7d against A549 cells at <12.5 μg/mL compared with other tested compounds. The results of the cytotoxicity were correlated with molecular docking studies using anaplastic lymphoma kinase (PDB ID: 2XP2). The compounds 7b and 7d exhibited −5.64 and −5.43 kcal/mol, respectively, which were related to the cytotoxicity activity.