Flavonoids are a particularly widely studied class of phytoestrogens that are found throughout the plant kingdom, and are known to possess diverse biological and pharmacological properties such as anti-oxidant, anti-viral and anti-cancer. Many flavonoids exist as dimers, comprising identical or non-identical units joined symmetrically or non-symmetrically through various linkages. Our group has exploited the carbocation reactivities of flavones and isoflavones to generate a wide range of novel flavonoids, such as the dependensin analogues 11,2 and alternate scaffold 23,4, which have been shown to possess a wide range of interesting biological activities. The results of these studies will be presented in this talk.
