Attempts to prepare substituted chromones as novel retinoids revealed that some chromones were unstable under Wadsworth–Horner–Emmons reaction conditions. Hence, Wittig reactions were used to prepare chromone-based compounds as potential retinoids. Firstly, Wittig reagents prepared from 3-bromomethyl-chromen-4-one were reacted with olefinic-aldehydes to provide the target compounds with all-trans side chains in good yield ...