Synthesis of 2,6-diaryl-substituted pyridines and their antitumor activities.

For the development of novel antitumor agents, we designed and synthesized 2,6-diaryl-substituted pyridine derivatives bearing three aryl groups, which are the bioisosteres of terpyridine, and evaluated their biological activities. Most of the 18 prepared compounds showed moderate cytotoxicity against several human cancer cell lines. From the structure-activity relationships we may conclude that the number of aryl groups employed would be critical for their biological activities.