ORIGINAL RESEARCH Microwave-assisted solvent-free synthesis of biologically active novel heterocycles from 3-formylchromones T. N. Mohammed Musthafa • Zeba N. Siddiqui • Fohad M. Husain • Iqbal Ahmad Received: 23 February 2010 / Accepted: 5 July 2010 / Published online: 20 July 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract A series of novel chromone derivatives have been synthesized employing 3-formylchromones and 5-acetyl-1,3-dimethylbarbituric acid as starting materials both under conventional heating method and microwave irradiation technique in good yields. The synthesized compounds were screened in vitro antibacterial activity against the representative panel of two Gram-positive bacteria and two Gram-negative bacteria. The synthesized compounds were also tested for their inhibitory action against three strains of fungus. The various compounds show potent inhibitory action against test organisms. Keywords 3-Formylchromone  5-Acetyl-1, 3-dimethylbarbituric acid  Microwave irradiation  Antibacterial activity  Antifungal activity Introduction Development of new antibacterial agents with novel structure and mode of action remains the primary goal of scientists for the solution of increasing bacterial resistance gained by microorganism to classical antibacterial agents (Moneer et al., 2002). Chalcones and their derivatives are an attractive molecular scaffold for the search of new biologically active molecules. Also, chromones comprise a vast array of oxygen containing compounds ubiquitous in plants (Barton and Ollis, 1979). They form basic nucleus of flavones and have been recognized as the essential com- ponent of phamacophores of a large number of bioactive molecules (Dewick, 1994; Hansch et al., 1990). Molecules containing chromone structure possess a myriad of bio- logical activities ranging from antifungal (Prakash et al., 2008), antioxidant (Kuroda et al., 2009), neuroprotective (Larget et al., 2000), HIV-inhibitory (Yu et al., 2004), antibacterial (Deng et al., 2000) to anticancer (Valenti et al., 2000) activities. Chromone derivatives are also active at benzodiazepine receptors and on lipoxygenases and cyclo- oxygenases (Horton et al., 2003). It was also sited in the literature that Hormothamnione, a naturally occurring sty- rylchromone isolated from the blue green algae, Hor- mothamnione enteromophoides has potent cytotoxicity to P-388 lymophocytic leukaemia and HL-60 human promy- elocytic leukaemia cells (Alonso and Brossi, 1988; Grazul and Budzisz, 2009). Chalcones, the flavanoid and isoflav- anoid precursors, display a wide spectrum of biological activities including antioxidant (Stevens et al., 2003; Vogel et al., 2008), antibacterial (Sugamoto et al., 2008; Avila et al., 2008), antimalarial, antileishmanial (Liu et al., 2003; Quintin et al., 2009; Suryawanshi et al., 2008), anticancer (Lawrence et al., 2006), antiangiogenic (Mojzis et al., 2008), anti-infective, anti-inflammatory (Nowaskowska, 2007; Cheng et al., 2008), antifungal (Lahtchev et al., 2008), nitric oxide inhibition (Rojas et al., 2002), tyrosinase inhibition (Nerya et al., 2004), etc. It is also worth men- tioning that the derivatives of chalcones particularly pyr- azoline nucleus forms the core structure of many drugs and have been reported to possess widespread biological activities (Chimenti et al., 2005; Khode et al., 2009). In view of variety of pharmacological properties exhibited by chromones, chalcones and its derivatives, we T. N. Mohammed Musthafa (&)  Z. N. Siddiqui Department of Chemistry, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh 202002, India e-mail: karamusth@yahoo.com F. M. Husain  I. Ahmad Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh 202002, India 123 Med Chem Res (2011) 20:1473–1481 DOI 10.1007/s00044-010-9386-2 MEDICINAL CHEMISTR Y RESEARCH