Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of 5-benzylidene-2-iminothiazolidin-4-ones as selective GSK-3β inhibitors.

In this work, iminothiazolidin-4-one derivatives were explored as selective GSK-3β inhibitors. Molecular docking analysis was carried to design a series of compounds, which were synthesized using substituted thiourea, 2-bromoacetophenones and benzaldehydes. Out of the twenty five compounds synthesized during this work, the in vitro evaluation against GSK-3 led to the identification of nine compounds with activity in lower nano-molar range (2-85 nM). Further, in vitro evaluation against CDK-2 showed five compounds to be selective towards GSK-3.