Synthesis and Anticancer Perspective of Pyridopyrimidine Scaffold - An Overview

The core pyridopyrimidines are gaining interest in organic and heterocyclic chemistry in recent days, as this scaffold acts as a building block because of its wide range of biological and pharmacological applications like anticancer, antimicrobial, fungicidal, antiviral, CNS, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory properties. This review mainly emphasizes the evolution in anticancer properties of pyridopyrimidines since 2008 especially the method of synthesis and anticancer activity of synthesized compounds with reporting of active anticancer scaffolds. Important starting materials which are widely used for the synthesis are 2-thioxopyrimidine, ethyl 2-cyanoacetate, 2-amino-3-cyano-4-trifluoromethyl-6-phenyl-pyridine, 2-amino-4,6-disubstituted nicotinonitrile, 2-chloro-3-pyridine carboxylic acid, in which 2-thioxopyrimidine is found to be mostly employed in the synthesis. Pyridopyrimidines which are synthesized from different starting materials, in which the more active compounds are reported here which may help in further discovery/ development of novel molecules.