Synthesis and Anti-Microbial Activity of Some Stilbene Derivatives

Review of literature shows that stilbene derivatives are widely distributed in nature and known to posses various activities such as antimicrobial, anticancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti- leukemic and anti- HIV etc. The hydroxylated and methoxylated compounds are obtained from the plants. In the course of our research for stilbene derivatives, we try to synthesize some new methoxylated and hydroxylated stilbenes as well as other halogen containing stilbenes by using Wittig reaction and evaluated them for their antimicrobial activity.

We synthesized substituted benzyl (chloro) triphenyl phosphorane by using substituted Benzyl chloride. Then we prepared various stilbenes by reacting substituted Benzyl (chloro) tri phenyl phosphorane with various substituted aldehydes (Scheme -1). Stilbenes were also synthesized by reacting phenyl acetic acid with different aldehydes and later replacement of OH group of carboxylic acid by appropriate substituent's by different methods.Structures of these newly synthesized stilbene derivatives were confirmed by IR, NMR, and MASS spectra. Antimicrobial studies show that synthesized compounds have moderate activity.