Sci Pharm www.scipharm.at Research article Open Access Antidepressant/Anxiolytic and Anti-Nociceptive Effects of Novel 2-Substituted 1,4-Benzodiazepine-2-ones 1 2 1 Harjit SINGH , Jintana SATTAYASAI , Pornthip LATTMANN , 2 1 Yodchai BOONPRAKOB , Eric LATTMANN * 1 School of Life & Health Sciences, Pharmacy, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, England. 2 Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, 40002 Khon Kaen, Thailand. * Corresponding author. E-mail:
[email protected] (E. Lattmann) Sci Pharm. 2010; 78: 155–169 doi:10.3797/scipharm.1004-12 Published: May 17th 2010 Received: April 15th 2010 Accepted: May 17th 2010 This article is available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.3797/scipharm.1004-12 © Singh et al.; licensee Österreichische Apotheker-Verlagsgesellschaft m. b. H., Vienna, Austria. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Oxazepam (4a) has been used as overall starting material in the synthesis of novel 2-substituted 1,4-benzodiazepines. By reacting Oxazepam 4a with commercially available hydrazines, hydrazides, semicarbazide, aminoguanidine and N,N-dimethylamino aniline in ethanol under acetic conditions, a series of diazenyl-1,4-benzodiazepines 5a–5i and 2-amino- 1,4-benzodiazepine 5k were obtained in good yields. These novel compounds served as new chemical entities (NCE) for testing in mice. The diazo-benzodiazepine 5d has shown a promising antidepressant effect in initial experiments in vivo at a dose of 5 mg/kg.