Lewis Acid-Driven Multicomponent Reactions Enable 2-Alkyl Chromanones with Anticancer Activities.

2-Alkyl chromanone scaffold has become prominent in pharmaceuticals and natural compounds. Consequently, devising robust strategies for synthesizing 2-alkyl chromanones remains crucial. Here, multicomponent reactions were employed to synthesize 2-alkyl chromanones containing an oxazole moiety using 3-formylchromones, amines, and -propargylamides as reactants. This method utilizes readily available feedstocks with a catalytic amount of Zn(OTf) and exhibits an impressive substrate scope compared to existing methods. Importantly, the synthesized compounds demonstrated highly selective anticancer activity against the DU145 cell line.