The College of Education for Pure Sciences at the University of Basra discussed a master’s thesis on the preparation, diagnosis and theoretical study of some cyclic amides.
The thesis submitted by a master's student (Heba Salman Ibrahim), this study included the preparation of two series of maleic acids consisting of ten compounds, derived by Diels Alder condensation reaction. The prepared compounds were characterized using FT-IR, 1HNMR, 13CNMR and mass spectrometry.
The molecular docking study of the prepared maleic acids was concluded to show their binding to the active sites of the protein (PDB ID: 3PP0) as receptors responsible for breast cancer and to inhibit the growth of cancer cells.
The binding energy was calculated between the prepared compounds and the acceptor (PDB ID: 3PP0) and the number of hydrogen bonds, their length and influence were determined by means of Van der Waals forces between the different amino acids for each studied protein. The prepared compounds bound a number of amino acids at the active sites of the receptor via a number of hydrogen bonds.
The theoretical study proved that the prepared compounds are effective as inhibitors of the growth of breast cancer cells
 The cytotoxicity of the prepared maleic acid was studied, and the breast cancer cell line MCF-7 was selected to measure the activity of the prepared compounds to inhibit live breast cancer cells using MTT method.
 Compounds AD, FD, AB, FB and AA gave the highest percentage of growth inhibition of MCF-7 breast cancer cells, as their inhibition rates were 93.39, 93.28, 85.15, 81.39 and 76.11, respectively, as calculated by IC50 for each. The results of the experimental and theoretical inhibition tests show the possibility of using the prepared compounds as a candidate drug to inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells.