A one-pot lithiation-phosphonylation procedure was elaborated as a method to prepare heteroaromatic phosphonic acids. It relied on the direct lithiation of heteroaromatics followed by phosphonylation with diethyl chlorophosphite and then oxidation with hydrogen peroxide. This protocol provided the desired phosphonates with satisfactory yields. This procedure also had some limitations in its dependence on the accessibility and stability of the lithiated heterocyclic compounds. The same procedure could be applied to phosphonylation of aromatic compounds, which do not undergo direct lithiation and thus require the use of their bromides as substrates. The obtained compounds showed weak antiproliferative activity when tested on three cancer cell lines.
Keywords: P-containing drugs; aminophosphonates; heteroaromatic; lithiation; organophosphorus chemistry; phosphonic acids; phosphonylation.