Development of amphipathic derivatives of thymol and carvacrol as potent broad-spectrum antibacterial agents.

In the current study, to discover novel antibacterial agents, we designed and synthesized 72 carvacrol and thymol derivatives by biomimicking the structure and function of cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). Many of the derivatives showed good antibacterial activity, and compound thy2I exhibited the most potent antibacterial activity with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values ranging from 0.5 µg/mL to 8 µg/mL. Compound thy2I could kill both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria via a membrane-targeting mechanism of action with a low frequency of resistance. In addition, thy2I had the advantages of good membrane selectivity, low toxicity in vitro and in vivo, and good plasma stability. The in vivo activity results revealed that thy2I exhibited a positive therapeutic effect in a mouse skin abscess model induced by Staphylococcus aureus ATCC29213. After thy2I treatment (10 mg/kg), the bacterial load of the S. aureus-infected abscesses was reduced by approximately 99.65 %. Our study suggests that thy2I may serve as an antibacterial lead for further clinical evaluation.

The recent development of thymol derivative as a promising pharmacological scaffold.

Thymol (a phenol ring bearing active phytoconstituent) is a privileged scaffold, which is diversified in natural sources. This scaffold acts as an obligatory template for scheming and arriving at designing some newer drug-molecules with potential biological activities. In the pharmacological perspective, the promising active sites of the scaffold are the positions C-1, C-4, and C-6 of thymol that would be accountable for developing potent drug candidates. This review aims to explore the various synthetic routes and the structural-activity relationship of thymol scaffold with suitable active pharmacophore sites.

Molecular Docking and Dynamics Simulation Analysis of Thymoquinone and Thymol Compounds from Nigella sativa L. that Inhibit Cag A and Vac A Oncoprotein of Helicobacter pylori: Probable Treatment of H. pylori Infections.

BACKGROUND: Helicobacter pylori infection is accountable for most of the peptic ulcer and intestinal cancers. Due to the uprising resistance towards H. pylori infection through the present and common proton pump inhibitors regimens, the investigation of novel candidates is the inevitable issue. Medicinal plants have always been a source of lead compounds for drug discovery. The research of the related effective enzymes linked with this gram-negative bacterium is critical for the discovery of novel drug targets. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study is to identify the best candidate to evaluate the inhibitory effect of thymoquinone and thymol against H. pylori oncoproteins, Cag A and Vac A in comparison to the standard drug, metronidazole by using a computational approach. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The targeted oncoproteins, Cag A and Vac A were retrieved from RCSB PDB. Lipinski's rule and ADMET toxicity profiling were carried out on the phytoconstituents of the N. sativa. The two compounds of N. sativa were further analyzed by molecular docking and MD simulation studies. The reported phytoconstituents, thymoquinone and thymol present in N. sativa were docked with H. pylori Cag A and Vac A oncoproteins. Structures of ligands were prepared using ChemDraw Ultra 10 software and then changed into their 3D PDB structures using Molinspiration followed by energy minimization by using software Discovery Studio client 2.5. RESULTS: The docking results revealed the promising inhibitory potential of thymoquinone against Cag A and Vac A with docking energy of -5.81 kcal/mole and -3.61kcal/mole, respectively. On the contrary, the inhibitory potential of thymol against Cag A and Vac A in terms of docking energy was -5.37 kcal/mole and -3.94kcal/mole as compared to the standard drug, metronidazole having docking energy of -4.87 kcal/mole and -3.20 kcal/mole, respectively. Further, molecular dynamic simulations were conducted for 5ns for optimization, flexibility prediction, and determination of folded Cag A and Vac A oncoproteins stability. The Cag A and Vac A oncoproteins-TQ complexes were found to be quite stable with the root mean square deviation value of 0.2nm. CONCLUSION: The computational approaches suggested that thymoquinone and thymol may play an effective pharmacological role to treat H. pylori infection. Hence, it could be summarized that the ligands thymoquinone and thymol bound and interacted well with the proteins Cag A and Vac A as compared to the ligand MTZ. Our study showed that all lead compounds had good interaction with Cag A and Vac A proteins and suggested them to be a useful target to inhibit H. pylori infection.

Thymol polymeric nanoparticle synthesis and its effects on the toxicity of high glucose on OEC cells: involvement of growth factors and integrin-linked kinase.

BACKGROUND: Nowadays, the drug delivery system is important in the treatment of diseases. PURPOSE: A polymeric nanoparticle modified by oleic acid (NPMO) as a Thymol (Thy) drug release system was synthesized from Thymbra spicata and its neurotrophic and angiogenic effects on rat's olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) in normal (NG) and high glucose (HG) conditions were studied. METHODS: The NPMO was characterized by using different spectroscopy methods, such as infrared, HNMR, CNMR, gel permeation chromatography, dynamic light scattering, and atomic force microscopy. Load and releasing were investigated by HPLC. The toxicity against OECs diet-induced by MTT assay. ROS and generation of nitric oxide (NO) were evaluated using dichloro-dihydro-fluorescein and Griess method, respectively. The expression of protein integrin-linked kinase (ILK), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and nerve growth factor (NGF) were evaluated by Western blotting. RESULTS: ThyNPMO is desirable for transferring drug as a carrier. The amount of Thy and extract (E) loaded on NPMO estimated at 43±2.5% and 41±1.8%, respectively. Then, 65% and 63% of the drug load were released, respectively. Thy, ThyNPMO, E, and ENPMO prevented HG-induced OECs cell death (EC50 33±1.5, 22±0.9, 35±1.8, and 25±1.1 µM, respectively). Incubation with Thy, ThyNPMO, E ,and ENPMO at high concentrations increased cell death with LC50 105±3.5, 82±2.8, 109±4.3, and 86±3.4 µM, respectively in HG states. CONCLUSION: OECs were protected by ThyNPMO and ENPMO in protective concentrations by reducing the amount of ROS and NO, maintaining ILK, reducing VEGF, and increasing BDNF and NGF. The mentioned mechanisms were totally reversed at high concentrations.

Synthesis of novel thymol derivatives against MRSA and ESBL producing pathogenic bacteria.

Twelve substituted aryl-azo-thymol derivatives (4a to 4 l) were synthesized and characterized by several spectral techniques such as, FTIR, UV-vis, proton NMR, Mass spectrometry and elemental analysis. Antimicrobial activities were evaluated by agar-well diffusion method against isolated MRSA, ESBL-producing pathogenic bacteria and antifungal resistant fungi, in vitro. In addition, drug likeness properties of derivatives were assessed through bioinformatic tools such as, PASS prediction, molecular docking and Lipinski rules of five, along with determination of toxic nature and LD50 values. Among 12 derivatives, 4a, 4b, 4c, 4 g, 4i, 4j and 4 k had significant antibacterial and antifungal activities with minimum inhibitory concentration values, 40 to 80 µg/ml. Moreover, the docking scores of derivatives were -8.27 to -11.44 kcal/mol, against 4 bacterial targets and -9.45 to -12.49 kcal/mol against 2 fungal targets. Thus, from in vitro and in silico studies, thymol derivatives had control of MRSA, ESBL-producing bacteria and antifungal resistant fungi.

Synthesis and antifungal activity of carvacrol and thymol esters with heteroaromatic carboxylic acids.

Aiming to obtain the more effective pathogen inhibitive ingredients and explore the influence of introducing different heterocyclic units to carvacrol and thymol esters, twenty ester derivatives with different heterocyclic units were synthesized. And the in vitro antifungal activity of title compounds against five plant pathogenic fungi was evaluated by mycelium growth rate method. The results showed that some carvacrol and thymol esters showed good to excellent antifungal activity, and compound 9d (4-bromo-5-isopropyl-2-methylphenyl picolinate) exhibited a broad antifungal spectrum. Preliminary study indicated that the introduction of furan, thiophene and pyridine unit could enhance the antifungal activity of carvacrol and thymol esters against Botrytis cinerea and a bromine atom on the para position of benzene moiety could enhance their antifungal activity.

Synthesis and tyrosinase inhibitory activities of 4-oxobutanoate derivatives of carvacrol and thymol.

Carvacrol (1) and thymol (2) were converted to their alkyl 4-oxobutanoate derivatives (7-20) in three steps, and evaluated for tyrosinase inhibitory activity. The compounds showed structure-dependent activity, with all alkyl 4-oxobutanoates, except 7 and 20, showing better inhibitory activity than the precursor 4-oxobutanoic acids (5 and 6). In general, thymol derivatives exhibited a higher percent inhibitory activity than carvacrol derivatives at 500 µM. Derivatives containing three-carbon and four-carbon alkyl groups gave the strongest activity (carvacrol derivatives 9-12, IC50 = 128.8-244.1 µM; thymol derivatives 16-19, IC50 = 102.3-191.4 µM).

Synthesis, anticholinesterase activity and molecular modeling study of novel carbamate-substituted thymol/carvacrol derivatives.

New thymol and carvacrol derivatives with the carbamate moiety were synthesized and their inhibitory effects on acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) were evaluated. 5-isopropyl-2-methylphenyl(3-fluorophenyl)carbamate (29) was found to be the most potent AChE inhibitor with IC50 values of 2.22µM, and 5-isopropyl-2-methylphenyl (4-fluorophenyl)carbamate (30) exhibited the strongest inhibition against BuChE with IC50 value of 0.02µM. Additionally, the result of H4IIE hepatoma cell toxicity assay for compounds 18, 20, 29, 30 and 35 showed negligible cell death at 0.07-10µM. Moreover in order to better understand the inhibitory profiles of these molecules, molecular modeling studies were applied. Binding poses of studied compounds at the binding pockets of AChE and BuChE targets were determined. Predicted binding energies of these compounds as well as structural and dynamical profiles of molecules at the target sites were estimated using induced fit docking (IFD) algorithms and post-processing molecular dynamics (MD) simulations methods (i.e., Molecular mechanics Poisson-Boltzmann surface area (MM-PBSA) approaches).

Synthesis and evaluation of antioxidant-s-(+)-Ibuprofen hybrids as gastro sparing NSAIDs.

Ibuprofen is one of the most popular NSAIDs for the last three decades but also known for its gastrointestinal side effects similar to other NSAIDs. To overcome this problem, we have designed and synthesized ibuprofen - antioxidant (thymol, guaiacol, eugenol, and menthol) hybrids (6-13) with and without spacer as gastro sparing agents. The hybrids have been found to be chemically stable, biolabile and exhibited retention of anti-inflammatory and analgesic activity with significant reduced ulcerogenicity as compared to the ibuprofen and ibuprofen + antioxidant physical mixture. The absence of ulcerogenicity may be attributed to antioxidants and improved physicochemical properties of these hybrid molecules.

Synthesis and evaluation of mutual prodrugs of ibuprofen with menthol, thymol and eugenol.

The present works deals with simple and efficient method of improving therapeutic efficacy of racemic ibuprofen by retarding gastrointestinal side effects through masking of carboxylic group chemically. This is achieved by synthesis and evaluation of ester derivatives of ibuprofen as mutual prodrugs with naturally occurring phenolic and alcoholic compounds. Promoieties like menthol; thymol and eugenol were selected with the aim of getting synergistic effect as these are natural analgesic having traditional medicinal values. Prodrugs are found to be highly lipophilic as compared to parent drug. All the prodrugs are found to be highly stable at acidic pH while undergoes hydrolysis at neutral and alkaline pH as indicated by their t(1/2) values. Synthesized prodrugs derivatives show increased anti-inflammatory activity that might be attributed to synergistic effect as ibuprofen conjugates to natural analgesics. Ulcer index shows much reduction in gastric ulceration compared to ibuprofen concluding the successful masking of acidic group.

Synthesis and in vitro antibacterial activity of thymol and carvacrol derivatives.

Fourteen esters of thymol and carvacrol were synthesized and characterized on the basis of spectral data. The NMR data for some of these are being given for the first time. The antibacterial activity screening of thymol, carvacrol and their esters were carried out against four Gram-positive (Streptococcus mutans MTCC 890, Staphylococcus aureus MTCC 96, Bacillus subtilis MTCC 121, Staphylococcus epidermidis MTCC 435) and one Gram-negative (Escherichia coli MTCC 723) bacteria. The enhancement in activity was noticed in the thymyl ester derivatives 4a-c (against S. mutans, B. subtilis and S. epidermidis) in comparison to thymol, whereas the carvacrol derivatives were found to be much less active than carvacrol.

13C-CPMAS and 1H-NMR study of the inclusion complexes of beta-cyclodextrin with carvacrol, thymol, and eugenol prepared in supercritical carbon dioxide.

Beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) inclusion complexes with carvacrol (1), thymol (2), and eugenol (3) (components of essential oils of vegetable origin) were prepared by the supercritical CO2 technique, and their structural characterization was achieved by means of 1H-NMR in aqueous solution and 13C-CPMAS NMR in the solid state. Evidence of the formation of the inclusion complexes for all the examined systems was obtained by 1H-NMR in solution, while 2D-ROESY-NMR experiments were used to investigate the geometry of inclusion. In addition, the dynamics of these inclusion complexes in the kHz timescale was investigated by analysis of the 1H and 13C spin-lattice relaxation times in the rotating frame.