Development of New Synthetic Methods for Carbazole Compounds Aimed at Drug Discovery and Exploratory Research on Pharmaceutical Materials

Abstract

We are developing the synthesis of biologically interesting carbazole compounds, including natural products by tandem cyclic reactions. In this report, we describe the new synthesis of carbazole-1,4-quinones as follows; 1) the synthesis of carbazole-1,4-quinones using a tandem ring closing metathesis (RCM) -dehydrogenation reaction, 2) a novel one-pot synthesis of carbazole-1,4-quinone by consecutive Pd-catalyzed cyclocarbonylation, desilylation, and oxidation reactions. Two new synthetic strategies were applied to the synthesis of carbazole-1,4-quinone alkaloids and ellipticine quinones, and then the antiproliferative activity against HCT-116 and HL-60 cells of the synthesized compounds were evaluated.