Abstract In this work, a library of diverse chemically and medicinally important heterocyclic polyhydroquinoline derivatives was efficiently prepared via a one-pot multicomponent reaction starting from various raw materials including aromatic aldehydes, dimedone or 1,3-cyclohexandione, ethyl acetoacetate or methyl acetoacetate and ammonium acetate in the presence of Fe3O4/SiO2-OSO3H as a sulfonated silica-based magnetic nanocatalyst in high yields. Main advantages of the present practical approach are ready availability of starting materials, non-toxicity, inexpensiveness, ease of workup procedure, diversity orientation synthesis and an eco-friendly nature of the reaction. The nanocatalyst was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) spectra. The nanocatalyst was simply recovered using an external magnet and reused several times. Then, the pharmacological and biological activities of the products were theoretically examined by the prediction of activity spectra for substances (PASS) program. Graphical abstract