Design, Synthesis, and Antifungal Activities of Novel Pyrazole-4-carboxamide Derivatives Containing an Ether Group as Potential Succinate Dehydrogenase Inhibitors.

A series of novel pyrazole-4-carboxamides bearing an ether group were designed and synthesized on the basis of the structure of commercial succinate dehydrogenase inhibitor (SDHI) fungicide flubeneteram via scaffold hopping and evaluated for their antifungal activities against five fungi. The bioassay results showed that most of the target compounds exhibited excellent in vitro antifungal activity against Rhizoctonia solani and some compounds exerted remarkable antifungal activities against Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Botrytis cinerea, Fusarium graminearum, and Alternaria alternate. Particularly, compounds 7d and 12b displayed outstanding antifungal activity against R. solani, with an EC50 value of 0.046 µg/mL, far superior to that of boscalid (EC50 = 0.741 µg/mL) and fluxapyroxad (EC50 = 0.103 µg/mL). Meanwhile, compound 12b also presented a broader fungicidal spectrum than other compounds. Moreover, in vivo anti-R. solani results showed that compounds 7d and 12b could significantly inhibit the growth of R. solani in rice leaves with excellent protective and curative efficacies. In addition, the results of the succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) enzymatic inhibition assay showed that compound 7d generated significant SDH inhibition, with an IC50 value of 3.293 µM, which was about 2 times better than that of boscalid (IC50 = 7.507 µM) and fluxapyroxad (IC50 = 5.991 µM). Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis indicated that compounds 7d and 12b significantly destroyed the typical structure and morphology of R. solani hyphae. The molecular docking study revealed that compounds 7d and 12b could embed into the binding pocket of SDH and form hydrogen bond interactions with TRP173 and TRY58 at the activity site of SDH, which was in line with fluxapyroxad, indicating that they had a similar mechanism of action. These results demonstrated that compounds 7d and 12b could be promising candidates of SDHI fungicides, which deserved further investigation.

The comparison of BLyS-binding peptides from phage display library and computer-aided design on BLyS-TACI interaction.

BLyS antagonists have become the therapeutic reagents in the treatment of autoimmune disorders. BLyS binding peptides and their Fc fusion proteins may be alternative BLyS antagonists in such application. In this study, the activity of BLyS binding peptide 814 obtained from phage display library and peptide TA designed by computer-aided modeling on the interaction of BLyS-TACI was compared. In addition, to maintain the spatial conformation and stability of the peptides, human IgG1 Fc fragment was fused to peptides 814 and TA to form peptide-Fc fusion proteins, steady and innovative peptibodies. The prokaryotic expression plasmids pET30a-814-Fc and pET30a-TA-Fc for these peptibodies were acquired by genetic engineering, and confirmed by DNA sequencing. After the right plasmids were transformed into Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3), the fusion proteins were expressed and purified by protein A affinity column. As a result of competitive ELISA, peptides 814 and TA at 100µg/ml displayed 52.2% and 28.6% inhibition on the interaction of TACI-Fc with BLyS respectively. Moreover, 814-Fc and TA-Fc fusion proteins could bind to BLyS in a dosage-dependent manner as TACI-Fc did, and displayed 54.7% and 26.1% inhibition on the interaction of TACI-Fc-Myc with BLyS at 100µg/ml respectively. So 814-Fc and TA-Fc proteins had the similar bioactivity as the peptides did. Furthermore, compared with TA-Fc, 814-Fc showed two-fold inhibition effect on BLyS binding to TACI, suggesting that 814-Fc could inhibit BLyS bioactivity significantly and might serve as a potential antagonist to treat autoimmune diseases associated with BLyS overexpression.