Recent studies showed that moderate consumption of red or white wines increased the chances of breast cancer, while similar consumption of red wines, rich in trans-resveratrol (trans-R), decreased the rate of prostate cancer. This prompted us to explore the role of various forms of R in cancer proliferation.

This review is a follow-up to the previous chapter, “Monofluorinated Heterocycles” (Topics in Heterocyclic Chemistry, 2012, 33–63), and presents an overview of synthetic chemistry of heterocycles with only one trifluoromethyl group directly attached to the ring (trifluoromethylated heterocycles). Particular attention is given to the modern direct trifluoromethylation methods, including catalytic reactions, organometallic reagents, carbene and hypervalent chemistry, utilization of ionic nucleophilic and electrophilic trifluoromethylating agents, and to other pertinent trends. One of the emphases of the review is compounds with biomedical potential.

A new chemical series of antiproliferative compounds was identified via high-throughput screening on DU-145 human prostate carcinoma cell line (hit compound potency - 5.7 μM). Exploration of the two peripheral diversity vectors of the hit molecule in a hit-targeted library and testing of the resulting compounds led to SAR generalizations and identification of the 'best' pharmacophoric moieties. The latter were merged in a single compound that exhibited a 200-fold better potency than the original hit compound. Specific cancer cell cytotoxicity was confirmed for the most potent compounds.

In our previous papers we introduced the Modular Chemical Descriptor Language (MCDL) for providing a linear representation of chemical information. A subsequent development was the MCDL Java Chemical Structure Editor which is capable of drawing chemical structures from linear representations and generating MCDL descriptors from structures.