Benzofuran-Derived Cyclic β-Amino Acid Scaffold for Building a Diverse Set of Flavonoid-Like Probes and the Discovery of a Cell Motility Inhibitor

We report here a practical, enantioselective synthesis of benzofuran-derived, cyclic trans-β-amino acid scaffold. In two cases, tricyclic derivatives having six- and eight-membered unsaturated lactams were obtained from this versatile scaffold. To explore the biological applications, these compounds were subjected to cell-based assays, using NIH3T3 mouse cells to examine their potency as cell motility inhibitors and identified 18 as a potent cell motility inhibitor (IC50 ≈ 40 μM in chamber cell migration assay).