Synthesis, Anticancer, and Molecular Docking Studies of Quinolone‐Thiosemicarbazones Using Fe ₃ O ₄ @gly‐SO ₃ H as a Magnetically Separable Nanocatalyst

Abstract In the present work, we have synthesized quinolone‐thiosemicarbazones using Fe 3 O 4 @gly‐SO 3 H as a novel magnetically separable Bronsted acidic catalyst. The structure of Fe 3 O 4 @gly‐SO 3 H was established by FT‐IR, EDX, XRD, FE‐SEM, VSM, and TGA‐DTA analyses. The synthesized molecules ( 3a–j ) were evaluated for in vitro cytotoxic assay against the human breast cancer cell line (MCF‐7). All the tested compounds ( 3a–j ) exhibit a maximum % of inhibition at 10, 50, and 100 µg/mL concentrations. The anticancer evaluations of quinolone‐thiosemicarbazones demonstrate that compounds 3e and 3h were the most potent, and they strongly reduce the proliferation of cancer cells (MCF‐7) at 100 µg/mL concentration. Moreover, the structure‐activity relationships (SAR) of the targeted compounds against the EGFR growth factor using 4HJO protein revealed that the binding capacity of compounds varies from −7.3 to −8.8 kcal/mol.