The discovery of antibiotics was a very important scientific achievement, and their introduction to patients has greatly improved the clinical outcomes of treating bacterial infections. With the increasing use of antibiotics, we are seeing an increased occurrence of bacteria that are resistant to them. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics represents a major threat to public health. Bacterial evolution is constantly taking place and it is of vital importance to keep discovering and researching new substances.
Inhibiting synthesis of cell wall is a very good selective target for antibiotic agents, because it is present only in bacterial cells. Building block of the cell wall is cross-linked polymer peptidoglycan, with the purpose of maintaining structural integrity of the cell and withstanding the forces of turgor pressure. In the initial stage of peptidoglycan synthesis MurA enzyme catalyses the reaction of transferring phosphoenolpyruvate to UDP-N-acetylglucosamine. That is why it is also called UDP-N-acetylglucosamine enol pyruvyl transferase. After many years, fosfomycin is still the only inhibitor of the MurA enzyme in clinical use. Fosfomycin mimics the MurA enzyme substrate phosphoenolpyruvate. Due to the inevitable development of resistance to a known MurA target, fosfomycin, it is necessary to discover new potential compounds.
In our experimental work we synthetized N-phenylaziridine inhibitors of MurA enzyme which we designed by imitating the basic structure of fosfomycin. We developed a synthesis path from the starting 3-aminobenzoic acid to 3-azidobenzoic acid. Subsequently, various amino acids were attached with an amide bond, and then the azido group was converted into an aziridine ring with ethyl acrylate. Finally, we hydrolysed the ester on the aziridine ring. The synthesized compounds were evaluated by spectroscopic and chromatographic methods. The inhibitory activity was assessed with biological testing on the MurA enzyme from E. coli. Two compounds showed inhibitory activity, but their structure would need further optimization.
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