Chalcones bearing N, O, and S-heterocycles: Recent notes on their biological significances

Because of its relatively easy synthesis, chalcone skeleton has been as a point of interest for organic and medicinal chemists from research groups worldwide. Chalcone scaffold constitutes the core of some interesting biologically active natural products. Chalcone derivatives are among feasible potent active agents, such as anticancer, antibacterial, antifungal, antileishmanial, antimalarial, and antiviral. Due to the knowledge of heterocyclic chemistry, recently chalcones bearing heterocyclic moieties have been synthesized and biologically investigated for specific target of diseases. The current review focuses on the latest application of chalcones integrated with N, O, and S-heterocyclic system and their wide spectrum of biological performance during 10 years (2010-2019). The results reported in the review indicate that many chalcone-heterocycle hybrids may be useful as future drug candidates due to their comparable or higher activity than that of the standards.