Efficient Ru-Catalyzed Electrochemical Homo- and Heterocoupling Reaction of Terminal Alkynes: Synthesis, In Vitro Anticancer Activity, and Docking Study

With the objective to identify novel anticancer leads, herein ruthenium-catalyzed electrochemical homo- and heterocoupling reactions of terminal alkynes have been developed for the synthesis of the desired products. Among the synthesized 1,3-diynes, some of them were rigorously examined for possible in vitro anticancer activity against HeLa (human cervical cancer) and L6 normal (rat skeletal muscle) cell lines. Additionally, the docking study was also performed toward 16 ovarian cancer targets with binding affinity calculations with respect to the standard. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first scientific report on the ruthenium-catalyzed electrochemical homocoupling reaction between terminal alkynes with its in vitro anticancer and in silico docking studies.

Automated summary

In this study, ruthenium-catalyzed electrochemical homo- and heterocoupling reactions of terminal alkynes were developed for the synthesis of anticancer drugs. The synthesized compounds were evaluated for their anticancer activity and docking studies were performed to examine their binding affinity with ovarian cancer targets.