Synthesis, antimalarial, antileishmanial evaluation, and molecular docking study of some 3-aryl-2-styryl substituted-4(3H)-quinazolinone derivatives

Quinazolinones are a diverse group of nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds with promising antimalarial and antileishmanial activities. Herein, some 3-aryl-2-styryl substituted-4(3H)-quinazolinones were synthesized via cyclization, condensation, and hydrolysis reactions. (1)H NMR, FTIR and elemental microanalysis was used to verify the structures of the synthesized compounds. The in vivo antimalarial and in vitro antileishmanial activities of the target compounds were investigated using mice infected with Plasmodium berghi ANKA and Leishmania donovani strain, respectively. Among the test compounds, 8 and 10 showed better antimalarial activities with percent suppression of 70.01 and 74.18, respectively. In addition, (E)-2-(4-nitrostyryl)-3-phenylquinazolin-4(3H)-one (6) showed promising antileishmanial activity (IC(50) = 0.0212 µg/mL). It is two and 150 times more active than the standard drugs amphotericin B deoxycholate (IC(50) = 0.0460 µg/mL) and miltefosine (IC (50) = 3.1911 µg/mL), respectively. Its superior in vitro antileishmanial activity was supported by a molecular docking study conducted in the active site of Lm-PTR1. Overall, the synthesized 3-aryl-2-styryl substituted-4(3H)-quinazolinones showed promising antileishmanial and antimalarial activities and are desirable scaffolds for the synthesis of different antileishmanial and antimalarial agents. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13065-022-00903-0.