Development trans‐N‐benzyl hydroxyl cinnamamide based compounds from cinnamic acids and characteristics anticancer potency

The derivatization of three hydroxycinnamamides becomes trans-N-benzylhydroxycinnamamides, and their potential assay as anticancer agents has been carried out. N-benzyl-p-coumaramide (5a), N-benzylcafeamide (5b), and N-benzylferulamide (5c) were obtained from p-coumaric, cafeic, and ferulic acid, respectively, with benzylamine via four reaction steps, i.e., acetylation, chlorination, amidation, and deacetylation. All products characterize using FTIR, 1 H-NMR, and 13C-NMR spectroscopy, and their cytotoxicity were tested against P388 leukemia murine cells by MTT method. Although compound 5b and 5c have no and low anticancer activity with IC50 sequentially of 674.38 and 179.56 μg/mL, compound 5a showed potentially use as an anticancer agent with IC50 of 16.15 μg/mL Molecular modelling studies were performed to understand the interactions with the activity against murine leukemia P388 cells.