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REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1570385
Pharmacological Potential of Natural Chalcones: A Recent Studies and Future Perspective
Provisionally accepted
Suman Adhikari1
Priyatosh Nath2Vishal Kumar Dev3
Dr. Niranjan Das4
Antara Banerjee5Surajit Pathak5
Asim K Duttaroy6*- 1Government Degree College, Dharmanagar, India
- 2Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, Shreveport, Louisiana, United States
- 3School of Health Sciences and Technology, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
- 4Ramthakur College Agartala, Agartala, India
- 5Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chettinad University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
- 6University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
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Chalcones isolated from natural sources are the primary metabolites of numerous biologically intriguing and pharmacologically essential drugs. Chalcones' pharmacological properties are believed to result from a double bond conjugated to carbonyl functionality. This review aims to summarise the research findings, showing naturally occurring chalcones as a preferred scaffold in medicinal chemistry. Natural chalcones have an intense antimicrobial activity that targets many pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. Strong antibiotic qualities are exhibited by chalcones, including 4-hydroxyderricin, licochalcone A and C, isobavachalcone, and pinocembrin chalcone. Furthermore, chalcones are promising pharmacological agents for cancer treatment; they inhibit angiogenesis, decrease metastasis, and induce death in tumor cells via diverse mechanisms. Chalcones are also considered promising therapeutic agents for diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular diseases because of their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant characteristics and ability to modify enzyme functioning. This review emphasizes several aspects, such as the biosynthesis of chalcones, preparation of chalcone derivatives, isolation of chalcones, structural features of chalcones, structure-activity relationship study, the role of natural chalcones in managing various diseases and illustrates their action mechanism to control disease progression.
Keywords: Chalcones, biosynthesis, Pharmacological activity, structural features and antimicrobial activity, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer
Received: 03 Feb 2025; Accepted: 18 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Adhikari, Nath, Dev, Das, Banerjee, Pathak and Duttaroy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Asim K Duttaroy, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.