The targets of currently used antibacterial agents: lessons for drug discovery.

Based on the mode of action of antibacterial drugs currently used, targets can be defined as distinct cellular constituents such as enzymes, enzyme substrates, RNA, DNA, and membranes which exhibit very specific binding sites at the surface of these components or at the interface of macromolecular complexes assembled in the cell. Intriguingly, growth inhibition or even complete loss of bacterial viability is often the result of a cascade of events elicited upon treatment with an antibacterial agent. In addition, their mode of action frequently involves more than one single target. A comprehensive description of the targets exploited so far by commercialized antibacterial agents, including anti-mycobacterial agents, is given. The number of targets exploited so far by commercial antibacterial agents is estimated to be about 40. The most important biosynthetic pathways and cellular structures affected by antibacterial drugs are the cell wall biosynthesis, protein biosynthesis, DNA per se, replication, RNA per se, transcription and the folate biosynthetic pathway. The disillusionment with the genomics driven antibacterial drug discovery is a result of the restrictive definition of targets as products of essential and conserved genes. Emphasis is made to not only focus on proteins as potential drug targets, but increase efforts and devise screening technologies to discover new agents interacting with different RNA species, DNA, new protein families or macromolecular complexes of these constituents.

Novel ketolide antibiotics with a fused five-membered lactone ring--synthesis, physicochemical and antimicrobial properties.

In an effort to find novel semisynthetic macrolides with extended antibacterial spectrum and improved activity we prepared a series of compounds based on commercially available clarithromycin, a potent and safe antimicrobial agent of outstanding clinical and commercial interest. According to the literature, improvement of antibacterial activity of erythromycin type antibiotics can be achieved by introduction of fused heterocycles such as cyclic carbonates or carbamates at positions 11 and 12 (such as in telithromycin). In the course of the work presented here, a similar, hitherto unprecedented set of compounds bearing a five-membered lactone ring fused to positions 11 and 12 was prepared based on carbon-carbon bond formation via intramolecular Michael addition of a [(hetero)arylalkylthio]acetic acid ester enolate to an alpha,beta-unsaturated ketone as the key step. Some of the ketolide compounds described in this paper were highly active against a representative set of erythromycin sensitive and erythromycin resistant test strains. The best compound showed a similar antimicrobial spectrum and comparable activity in vitro as well as in vivo as telithromycin. Furthermore, some physicochemical properties of these compounds were determined and are presented here. On the basis of these results, the novel ketolide lactones presented in this paper emerged as valuable lead compounds with comparable properties as the commercial ketolide antibacterial telithromycin (Ketek).

Novel dihydrofolate reductase inhibitors. Structure-based versus diversity-based library design and high-throughput synthesis and screening.

Novel 2,4-diaminopyrimidines bearing N,N-disubstituted aminomethyl residues at the 5-position were designed as dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) inhibitors. These compounds were obtained by treatment of 1-[(2,4-diamino-5-pyrimidinyl)methyl]pyridinium bromide with secondary amines in a polar solvent and in the presence of triethylamine at room temperature. The procedure was found to be very efficient and suitable for application in high-throughput synthesis. In addition, we found that high-throughput screening for enzymatic and in vitro antibacterial activity could be performed on crude reaction mixtures, thus avoiding any purification step. Over 1200 proprietary secondary amines were selected for high-throughput synthesis, based on structural and diversity-related criteria, and the resulting products were submitted to high-throughput screening. A greater number of hits, and significantly more active compounds, were obtained through structure-based library design than through diversity-based library design. Different classes of inhibitors of DHFR were identified in this way, including compounds derived from di-, tri-, and tetracyclic amines. In general, these products showed high activity against the enzymes derived from both TMP-sensitive and TMP-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae. Some compounds possessed appreciable selectivity for the bacterial over the human enzyme, whereas other compounds were not at all selective. In most cases, active enzyme inhibitors also displayed antibacterial activity.