Tapan Kumar Maity et al., Int. J. Res. Pharm. Sci., 2021, 12(2), 1648-1658 OėĎČĎēĆđ AėęĎĈđĊ IēęĊėēĆęĎĔēĆđ JĔĚėēĆđ Ĕċ RĊĘĊĆėĈč Ďē PčĆėĒĆĈĊĚęĎĈĆđ SĈĎĊēĈĊĘ Published by JK Welfare & Pharmascope Foundation Journal Home Page: www.pharmascope.org/ijrps Synthesis, characterization, molecular docking and in vitro anticancer activity of 3-(4-methoxyphenyl)-5-substituted phenyl-2-pyrazoline-1- carbothioamide Benupani Sahu 1 , Rajapandi R. 2 , Avik Maji 1 , Abhik Paul 1 , Tanushree Singha 1 , Tapan Kumar Maity *1 1 Division of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Jadavpur University, Kolkata – 700032, West Bengal, India 2 Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Arulmigu Kalasalingam College of Pharmacy, Krishnan Koil – 626126, Tamilnadu, India Article History: Received on: 15 Mar 2020 Revised on: 01 Apr 2021 Accepted on: 12 Apr 2021 Keywords: Anticancer, Molecular docking, Pyrazoline, SRB Assay and Molegro Virtual Docker AćĘęėĆĈę In the present study, eight numbers of new 3- (4-methoxy phenyl)-5- substituted phenyl-2-pyrazoline-1-carbothioamide (5a-h) have been synthe- sized from 1- (4-methoxy phenyl)-3- (substituted phenyl)-prop-2-en-1-one (3a-h) and structurally characterized by using FT-IR, 1 H NMR, 13 C NMR, Mass and Elemental analysis. The synthesized molecules were biologically eval- uated for their in vitro anticancer activity against human breast adenocar- cinoma (MCF-7), liver cancer (Hep-G2) and leukaemia cancer (K-562) cell line using Sulforhodamine B (SRB) bioassay technique. From the all syn- thesized compounds 5a, 5c, 5d, and 5e exhibited potent anticancer activity (GI 50 = <10μg/ml) as compared to the controlled drug 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) (GI 50 =44.5μg/ml) and Adriamycin (ADR) (GI 50 = <10μg/ml) on MCF-7 cell lines. Besides this, all the synthesized compounds have exhibited moderate activity against human liver cancer (Hep-G2) and leukaemia cancer (K-562) cell lines. In addition, molecular docking studies were also explored in order to study the probable binding speciϐicity into the active site of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor tyrosine kinase (EGFR) (PDB ID: 1M17) using Molegro Virtual Docker Evaluation 2013 6.0.1 (MVD). Based on the molecular docking result, it was found that compound 5a exhibited the best interaction with the above target (i.e., EGFR) by interacting with speciϐic amino acid residues such as: Thr 766, Gin 767, Thr 830, Cys 575, Ala 719 and Met 769. * Corresponding Author Name: Tapan Kumar Maity Phone: +919432299486 Email: jutkmaity@yahoo.com ISSN: 0975-7538 DOI: https://doi.org/10.26452/ijrps.v12i2.4759 Production and Hosted by Pharmascope.org © 2021 | All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION Globally, cancer is one of the serious and dreadful diseases characterized by the uncontrolled, rapid, and pathological proliferation of cells (Chavan et al., 2018). In underdeveloped countries incidence and mortality rate due to cancer increases day to day because of the growth and aging of the popula- tion (Suma et al., 2019). As per a survey by GLOBO- CAN in 2018, over 18.1 million new cancer cases and 9.6 million deaths till now and the cases may grad- ually raise up to 23.6 million by 2030 (Suma et al., 2019; Santosh et al., 2019; Jemal et al., 2011). Despite surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, can- cer is still the second leading cause of death after 1648 © International Journal of Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences