Abstract

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a disease which is prevalent worldwide. A recent computational study concluded that 1,3-diketone compounds may exhibit antibacterial properties suggesting that they could be used to develop novel antitubercular drugs (Muddassar et al, 2010). Other studies have shown the growing importance of 1,3-diketones in organic synthetic chemistry and how derivatives of these compounds are being used to develop antibacterial agents. Based on this information, A method was employed to synthesise four derivates of Muddassar’s 1,3-diketone compound through the use of Baker-Venkataraman’s rearrangement with yields between 37-69% were achieved. Higher yields could have been achieved if reaction mixtures were left to reflux for a full 24 hours. Spectral studies and other analytical techniques were used to characterise compounds 1-4. Compounds 1,2 & 4 were characterised to some degree mostly from NMR spectral studies with compound 2 only being characterised partially by IR spectroscopy and Mass spectroscopy. Full characterisation of these compounds however was inconclusive due to the quality of data acquired and further studies are required. Future work could see more thorough characterisation techniques which may involve more in depth analytical techniques such as two-dimensional NMR. Future studies could carry out synthesis of other diketones in the interest of biological activity studies.