Syntheses, reactivity, and biological applications of coumarins

Andrea Citarella; Serena Vittorio; Christian Dank; Laura Ielo

doi:10.3389/fchem.2024.1362992

Syntheses, reactivity, and biological applications of coumarins

Front Chem. 2024 Feb 19:12:1362992. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2024.1362992. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Andrea Citarella^#¹, Serena Vittorio^#², Christian Dank³, Laura Ielo⁴

Affiliations

¹ Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy.
² Dipartimento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy.
³ Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

This comprehensive review, covering 2021-2023, explores the multifaceted chemical and pharmacological potential of coumarins, emphasizing their significance as versatile natural derivatives in medicinal chemistry. The synthesis and functionalization of coumarins have advanced with innovative strategies. This enabled the incorporation of diverse functional fragments or the construction of supplementary cyclic architectures, thereby the biological and physico-chemical properties of the compounds obtained were enhanced. The unique chemical structure of coumarine facilitates binding to various targets through hydrophobic interactions pi-stacking, hydrogen bonding, and dipole-dipole interactions. Therefore, this important scaffold exhibits promising applications in uncountable fields of medicinal chemistry (e.g., neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, inflammation).

Keywords: biological applications; coumarins; inhibitory activities; reactivity; synthesis.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors thank the University of Turin and the University of Vienna for financial support. The authors acknowledge support from Project CH4.0 under the MUR (Italian Ministry for the University) program “Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2023–2027” (CUP: D13C22003520001).