Design, synthesis and biological activity of novel substituted 3-benzoic acid derivatives as MtDHFR inhibitors

• Autor(a) principal: Kronenberger, Thales
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Ferreira, Glaucio Monteiro, Ferreira de Souza, Alfredo Danilo, Santos, Soraya da Silva, Poso, Antti, Ribeiro, Joao Augusto, Tavares, Mauricio Temotheo, Pavan, Fernando Rogerio [UNESP], Goulart Trossini, Gustavo Henrique, Bertacine Dias, Marcio Vinicius, Parise-Filho, Roberto
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bmc.2020.115600; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/197053
• topic: Bioisosterism; Fragment optimization and drug design; MtDHFR; Tuberculosis

The enzyme dihydrofolate reductase from M. tuberculosis (MtDHFR) has a high unexploited potential to be a target for new drugs against tuberculosis (TB), due to its importance for pathogen survival. Preliminary studies have obtained fragment-like molecules with low affinity to MtDHFR which can potentially become lead compounds. Taking this into account, the fragment MB872 was used as a prototype for analogue development by bioisosterism/retro-bioisosterism, which resulted in 20 new substituted 3-benzoic acid derivatives. Compounds were active against MtDHFR, with IC50, values ranging from 7 to 40 mu M, where compound 4e not only had the best inhibitory activity (IC50 = 7 mu M), but also was 71-fold more active than the original fragment MB872. The 4e inhibition kinetics indicated an uncompetitive mechanism, which was supported by molecular modeling which suggested that the compounds can access an independent backpocket from the substrate and competitive inhibitors. Thus, based on these results, substituted 3-benzoic acid derivatives have strong potential to be developed as novel MtDHFR inhibitors and also anti-TB agents.