Numerous biological activities including antioxidant, antitumor, anti-inflammation, and antivirus of the natural product curcumin were reported. However, the clinical application of it was significantly limited by its instability, poor solubility, less body absorbing, and low bioavailability. This review focuses on the structure modification and antioxidant activity evaluation of curcumin. To study the structure-activity relationship (SAR), five series of curcumin analogs were synthesized and their antioxidant activity were evaluated in vitro. The results showed that electron-donating groups, especially the phenolic hydroxyl group are an essential component to improve the antioxidant activity.

Resveratrol, a naturally derived stilbene that exists in various foods and beverages, has attracted extensive exploration due to its multiple biological activities, such as anticancer, antioxidant, cardiovascular protection, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, chemopreventive effect, neuroprotective effect, immunomodulation and so on. However, owing to its poor oral bioavailability, the application of resveratrol is greatly restricted. Because of that, a large amount of efforts had been made by researchers on designing its derivatives to obtain compounds with improved efficiency and low toxicity for developing more active drugs for clinical application. In this report, we review the current development of studying on resveratrol derivatives including their properties and activities. Additionally, this article also presents the synthetic routes of correlative resveratrol derivatives.

The highly diastereoselective synthesis of CF-containing vicinal diamines by a convenient two-step procedure without the need to isolate the intermediate products is described.