2-Acetylbenzimidazole: a Valuable Synthon for the Synthesis of Biologically Active Molecules

Benzimidazole is an important moiety from a medicinal chemistry perspective due to its various biological activities such as antimicrobial, anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, anti-Alzheimers, and anti-inflammatory, etc. 2-acetylbenzimidazole is exploited to obtain various heterocyclic compounds of pharmacological interest. This review's main motive is to present the literature on 2-acetylbenzimidazole chemistry and provide valuable and up-to-date information for its applications. The present review is carried out by compiling literature from 1964 to 2020 concerning the synthesis and biological aspects of various heterocyclic compounds derived from 2-acetylbenzimidazole. Literature was collected from various online search engines viz. Google Scholar, PubMed, Science Direct, Core, and Semantic scholar. 2-acetylbenzimidazole has been successfully employed as a synthon to obtain heterocyclic system viz. oxirane, pyrazoline, thiazole, pyrazole, isoxazoline, isoxazole, pyridine, pyrimidine, thiazine, diazepine, and other miscellaneous rings. 2-acetylbenzimidazole has shown promise for the convenient synthesis of various heterocyclic compounds. The reactions can be carried out on various reactive sites of 2-acetylbenzimidazole, which are the carbonyl group and the amino group. This review will help to explore various heterocyclic compounds and particularly in the synthesis of biologically useful compounds.