Bacterial resistance to already discovered antibacterial agents is becoming an ever-increasing problem in healthcare. Crucial steps in the fight against resistance are taken with the development of new antibacterial agents. The biosynthesis of peptidoglycan, present only in the bacterial cell wall and essential for bacterial survival, has been a target of various antibacterial agents for a long time. Particularly interesting targets are the Mur enzymes involved in the initial stages of biosynthesis. Currently, only fosfomycin is available, therefore the Mur enzymes provide substantial opportunities for further antibacterial substance development.
The purpose of the master's thesis was the synthesis of MurA enzyme inhibitors deriving from N-acetylglucosamine. We attempted to create compounds with modifications at the C-1 position that would exhibit good inhibitory activity on MurA in Escherichia coli bacteria. Our goal was to mimic the natural substrate UDP-N-acetylglucosamine as closely as possible. We aimed to achieve this objective by using N-acetylglucosamine for the suitable orientation of functional compounds, facilitating their passage through the bacterial cell wall and by producing compounds with lipophilic fragments that could bind well to the enzyme's active site.
We planned the synthesis of 8 final compounds derived from N-acetylglucosamine by at first protecting all of its hydroxyl groups except the one at the C-1 position. By attaching various substituents to this position, we created 3 compounds that had an amide bond and 4 compounds that had a triazole bond, with both groups having different substituents bound. Acetyl protecting groups were removed from the obtained intermediate products at the end through basic hydrolysis, resulting in 7 final compounds. However, hydrolysis was unsuccessful for one of the compounds, and we were unable to synthesize it.
We evaluated the inhibitory activity of the final compounds by means of biological testing. Only compound 5 exhibited the residual activity of 38%. We determined its IC50 value, which amounted to 502 μM. By optimizing compound 5, we could come one step closer to synthesizing a new inhibitor of the enzyme MurA. Therefore, we expect that our work will play an important role in the development of new MurA inhibitors and will contribute to the creation of new antibacterial agents that act on resistant strains.
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