Synthesis and antimicrobial activity of novel benzo[b]furan derivatives

Many 2-arylbenzofuran derivatives are well known to exhibit a broad range of biological activities, including anticancer, antiproliferative, antiviral, antifungal, immunosuppressive, anti-platelet, anti-oxidative, insecticidal, anti-inflammatory, anti-feedant, and cancer preventative activity. The present paper describes the synthesis and antibacterial activity of some novel benzo[b]furan derivatives 6a -6h (Scheme 1) from commercially available 4- methyl-2-nitrophenol as starting material. The newly synthesized benzo[b]furan derivatives 6a- 6h compounds were screened to evaluate their antibacterial activity. Most of the compounds were found to display good to moderate antibacterial activity against different strains of bacteria, it was observed that among all the compounds tested, sulphonyl derivatives 6b, 6d, 6e, 6f, 6g and 6h showed good to excellent activity, while the carbonyl derivatives 6a and 6c showed least activity against all the tested bacterial strains.