The furan route to tropolones: probing the antiproliferative effects of β-thujaplicin analogs.

A direct route to analogs of the naturally occurring tropolone β-thujaplicin has been developed in just four steps from furan. Using this method, a series of derivatives were synthesized and evaluated. Several of these compounds demonstrated very high levels of potency against bacterial and fungal pathogens with good selectivity over mammalian cells.