Design, Synthesis and Cytotoxic Activities of Novel Aliphatic Amino-Substituted Flavonoids

A series of flavonoids 9a–f, 13b, 13d, 13e and 14a–f bearing diverse aliphatic amino moieties were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their cytotoxic activities against the ECA-109, A-549, HL-60, and PC-3 cancer cell lines. Most of the compounds exhibited moderate to good activities. The structure-activity relationships were studied, revealing that the chalcone skeleton is the most preferable for cytotoxic activities. Chalcone 9d was the most promising compound due to its high potency against the examined cancer cell lines (its IC(50) values against ECA-109, A549, HL-60 and PC-3 cells were 1.0, 1.5, 0.96 and 3.9 μM, respectively).