A mild and efficient one-pot synthesis of new indenone-fused heterocyclic compounds

The development of new synthetic methods in the research of novel bioactive compounds, such as natural products and analogous, drugs, diagnostics and agrochemicals, in academic and industrial chemistry is closely connected to the efficient synthesis of such compounds [1]. Indenone frameworks are in a large number of natural and synthetic drugs. Indenone-fused heterocycles have attracted the attention of chemists and pharmacologists because of their broad range of bioactivities [2].The presence of a trihalomethyl group in a molecule can result in significant changes in its physical, chemical, and biological properties. Many bioactive trihalomethylated compounds have found important applications in medicine and agriculture [3]. herein we report an efficient synthesis of indenone-fused heterocycles 5 trough multicomponent reactions of trichloroacetamidine derivatives 3 derived from the addition of various amines 1 to trichloroacetonitrile 2 with ninhydrin 4 (Fig 1). This strategy includes some advantages, such as simple experimental procedures, easy accessibility of reactants, absence of catalyst, high atom economy, and good to excellent product yields. All structures were confirmed by IR, 1H- and 13C-NMR analyses