The invention discloses an acid catalytic synthesis method and application of phenoxyacetate derivatives. In the method, an O-H
insertion reaction is performed on one
diazo ester compound and one phenolic compound by an acid catalyst to form a C-O bond to generate one corresponding phenoxyacetate derivative. The method provided by the invention adopts an acid as the catalyst, has mild conditions (
room temperature), is green and high-efficiency, can realize a
gram-scale reaction, and has industrial application prospects; the method does not need
transition metal catalysis, avoids
pollution to the environment caused by
metal ions in post-treatment, and conforms to the purpose of
green chemistry; and in addition, the developed methodology is applied to certain natural phenolic products or phenolic medicines with significant pharmacological activity to obtain one corresponding O-H
insertion product,
natural product magnolol and
honokiol are taken as examples, experiments find that the anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory activity of the O-H
insertion products are generally higher than those of the
magnolol and the
honokiol respectively, the anti-tumor activity is particularly obvious, andthe derivatives have the possibility of becoming a
medicine and provides more choices for sources of the novel
medicine.