Coumarins are naturally occurring molecules with a versatile range of activities. Their structural and physicochemical characteristics make them a privileged scaffold in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology. Many research articles and reviews compile information on this important family of compounds. In this overview, the most recent research papers and reviews from 2020 are organized and analyzed, and a discussion on these data is included. Multiple electronic databases were scanned, including SciFinder, Mendeley, and PubMed, the latter being the main source of information. Particular attention was paid to the potential of coumarins as an important scaffold in drug design, as well as fluorescent probes for decaging of prodrugs, metal detection, and diagnostic purposes. Herein we do an analysis of the trending topics related to coumarin and its derivatives in the broad field of drug discovery.

https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/26/2/501/pdf

Application of infrared spectroscopy combined with chemometrics in mushroom

Sweeping-micellar electrokinetic chromatography versus reversed phase liquid chromatography for the determination of coumarin in curry.

Direct quantification of hydroxyl radicals (OH•), the major driver for advanced oxidation process (AOPs), is difficult due to its high reactivity and extremely low half-life. Given that the effectiveness of AOPs is usually determined by its ability to generate hydroxyl or peroxyl radicals, a quantitative measurement of these radicals is essential to assess the performance of the process. In this study, for the first time, the performance of a vortex-based hydrodynamic cavitation (HC) system is evaluated via an indirect method using coumarin as a chemical probe. The hydroxylation of coumarin – an indirect indicator of OH• - to 7-OHC served as a measure of the efficiency of the HC system. The inception of cavitation was observed at ΔP > 100 kPa, and maximum coumarin hydroxylation occurred at ΔP = 250 kPa, pH < pKa and in non-isothermal conditions. The maximum observed coumarin conversion with HC alone was 6%, with the cavitation yield of 3.87 × 10−4 mg/W-min. The use of persulfate oxidant along with HC is the most effective in maximizing OH• generation with a cavitation yield of 15.30 × 10−4 mg/W-min. This study shows that simpler chemical probes such as coumarin can be used to identify the best-operating conditions across cavitating devices and can be used in their scale-up and comparison. 

Coumarin as a chemical probe to evaluate efficiency of vortex – based hydrodynamic cavitation process

Prospects of Using Pharmacologically Active Compounds for the Creation of Antimycobacterial Drugs

Coumarins are widely used due to their wide range of biological activities, but the long-term or excessive use of coumarin flavors can pose serious health hazards. Therefore, sensitive and specific methods for the quantification of these compounds in different matrices have been developed. In this review, an updated overview of the latest trends in sample preparation techniques and methods used to detect coumarins from March 2012 to April 2019 is provided. This study reviews different analytical methods (such as liquid chromatography coupled with different detectors, electrochemical sensors, capillary electrophoresis, etc.) and different pretreatment methods (such as liquid-liquid extraction, solid-phase extraction, dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction, etc.). Different methods for the pretreatment and determination of coumarins in plant, food, environmental, pharmaceutical and biological samples are summarized, discussed and compared.HighlightsProgress in pretreatment and analytical methods of coumarins are summarized.Fundamentals, instrumentation and applications of purification and quantification are summarized and compared.Optimization of experimental conditions are discussed.Newly emerged eco-friendly methods are introduced.

Li Guo-Hui

Papers

Progress in Pretreatment and Analytical Methods of Coumarins: An Update since 2012 – A Review