Chemotherapy represents the most applied approach to cancer treatment. Owing to the frequent onset of chemoresistance and tumor relapses, there is an urgent need to discover novel and more effective anticancer drugs. In the search for therapeutic alternatives to treat the cancer disease,
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Chemotherapy represents the most applied approach to cancer treatment. Owing to the frequent onset of chemoresistance and tumor relapses, there is an urgent need to discover novel and more effective anticancer drugs. In the search for therapeutic alternatives to treat the cancer disease, a series of hybrid pyrazolo[3,4-
d]pyrimidin-4(
5H)-ones tethered with hydrazide-hydrazones,
5a–
h, was synthesized from condensation reaction of pyrazolopyrimidinone-hydrazide
4 with a series of arylaldehydes in ethanol, in acid catalysis. In vitro assessment of antiproliferative effects against MCF-7 breast cancer cells, unveiled that
5a,
5e,
5g, and
5h were the most effective compounds of the series and exerted their cytotoxic activity through apoptosis induction and G0/G1 phase cell-cycle arrest. To explore their mechanism at a molecular level,
5a,
5e,
5g, and
5h were evaluated for their binding interactions with two well-known anticancer targets, namely the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and the G-quadruplex DNA structures. Molecular docking simulations highlighted high binding affinity of
5a,
5e,
5g, and
5h towards EGFR. Circular dichroism (CD) experiments suggested
5a as a stabilizer agent of the G-quadruplex from the
Kirsten ras (KRAS) oncogene promoter. In the light of these findings, we propose the pyrazolo-pyrimidinone scaffold bearing a hydrazide-hydrazone moiety as a lead skeleton for designing novel anticancer compounds.
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