Potential pharmacological uses of chalcones: a patent review (from June 2011 - 2014).

INTRODUCTION: Chalcones are one of the major classes of naturally occurring compounds. A large number of synthetic routes have been reported for the synthesis of chalcones, the most classical and general being the Claisen-Schmidt condensation. Chalcones and their derivatives have a huge importance in medicinal chemistry, displaying a wide range of important pharmacological activities. AREAS COVERED: The authors provide an overview of the recent scientific reports describing the obtention and study of new chalcones. The review emphasizes the rationale behind the natural sources, the discovery, the design, the synthesis, the biological activities and the study of structure-activity relationships of the new chalcone derivatives. The article is based on the literature published from June 2011 - 2014 related to the development of this family of compounds. The patents presented in this review have been collected from multiple electronic databases including Scifinder, Espacenet and Mendeley. EXPERT OPINION: Although a great number of extracts containing chalcones have been published in bibliographic sources, the potential of this scaffold could be deeply studied in many different areas in which almost nothing has been described. A lot of work should be done to reach the potency and safety requirements needed to develop new chemical entities as new drugs.