Synthesis and Preliminary Antitumor Activities of Aurone Derivatives

Aurones are an important type of flavonoids with broad biological activities and pharmacological effects, such as anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antibacterial, insect antifeedant etc. They are less common and not widely distributed in nature. The low contents in nature lead to high cost of extraction and separation. In order to extend the compounds diversity and study structure activity relationship, phenoxyacetic acid, 2,3,5-trimethylphenol, 4-chlorol-3,5-dimethylphenol, chloroacetic acid and various aromatic aldehydes are used as starting materials to synthesize three types of aurone derivatives. Their structures were characterized by melting point, H NMR, C NMR, ESI-MS and elemental analysis. Nine of twenty five synthetic compounds 2h~2m, 5a~5c were unreported in the literature. All the target compounds were evaluated for antitumor activities against Hela human cervical carcinoma cell lines by methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) method. The results showed that compounds 2b, 5b, 2s and 2g exhibited potentially high activity against Hela human cervical carcinoma cell lines with IC50 value of 44.3, 31.1, 43.8 and 41.9 μmol/L.