Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of thienopyrimidine hydroxamic acid based derivatives as structurally novel histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors.

New thienopyrimidine hydroxamic acid derivatives as HDACs inhibitors were designed, synthesized and evaluated. All compounds were evaluated for their ability to inhibit recombinant human HDAC1, HDAC3, and HDAC6 isoforms and in vitro anti-proliferative activity on tumor cell lines RMPI 8226 and HCT 116. Most of these compounds displayed good to excellent inhibitory activities against HDACs. The IC values of compound 9m against HDAC1, HDAC3, and HDAC6 was 29.81 ± 0.52 nM, 24.71 ± 1.16 nM, and 21.29 ± 0.32 nM. Most of these compounds showed strong anti-proliferative activity against human cancer cell lines including RMPI 8226 and HCT 116. The IC values of compound 9m against RPMI 8226 and HCT 116 proliferation were 0.97 ± 0.072 μM and 1.01 ± 0.033 μM, respectively. In addition, compound 9m noticeably up-regulated the level of histone H3 acetylation at the low concentration of 0.3 μM.