Synthesis of 4-Hydroxy-2-pyridinone Derivatives and Evaluation of Their Antioxidant/Anticancer Activities

A simple approach was applied for the regioselective synthesis of various pyridine-2-one derivatives or annulated pyridine as novel heterocyclic systems from the reaction of dehydroacetic acid (DHA) with mono- or bidentate nucleophile as with benzylamine and/or phenylenediamines in dichloromethane followed by transformation with different halo-compounds in refluxing 1,4-dioxane has been achieved in moderate to excellent yields (48-93 %). In addition, DFT studies of the key synthesized compounds were carried out for confirmed proposed mechanisms. The newly synthesized compounds were screened for their in-vitro inhibition activities against mammary gland breast cancer (MCF-7) and human prostate cancer (PC-3) using the MTT colorimetric method. Also, the target synthesized compounds were evaluated as antioxidant agents.