Discovery of 4-aminoquinazoline - Urea derivatives as Aurora kinase inhibitors with antiproliferative activity

Two series of 20 novel 4-aminoquinazoline - urea derivatives have been designed and synthesized. The entire target compounds were investigated for their in vitro antiproliferative activity against six human cancer cell lines (K562, U937, A549, NCI-H661, HT29 and LoVo) using the MTT-based assay. Most compounds showed significant antiproliferative activities against four solid tumor cell lines, but no or poor activities against two leukemia cell lines. Furthermore, the target compounds were screened for Aurora A/B kinases inhibitory activity. Among them, 7c, 7d, 8c, and 8d are more potent against Aurora A kinase than ZM447439. Docking study of compounds 7d and ZM447439 revealed that they bound strongly to the ATP-binding sites of Aurora A and B. Thus, they may be promising lead compounds for the development of novel anti-tumor drug potentially via inhibiting Aurora kinases.