A Facile Synthesis and Anticancer Activity of (

In the present investigation, a simple and flexible synthesis of a series of novel (E)-diethyl 2-styrylquinoline-3,4-dicarboxylates 3a-q has been achieved for the first time in good yields, involving one-pot sequential Arbuzov/Horner–Emmons reaction sequence using the newly-synthesized diethyl 2-(bromomethyl)quinoline-3,4-dicarboxylate as the substrate. The latter was obtained by NBS-mediated radical bromination reaction of the readily available diethyl 2-methylquinoline-3,4-dicarboxylate. A primary in vitro evaluation for their antiproliferative activity against human cancer cell lines (A549, HT29 and T24) revealed that the compound 3k with 3,4,5-trimethoxystyryl moiety represented the most active molecule against the tested A549 cell lines in this round of effort with the IC50 values of 2.38 µmol•L-1, being higher than the reference cisplatin.