The thiazolidinone ring is found in compounds that have widespan biology activity and there is mechanism-based evidence that compounds bearing this moiety inhibit P. aeruginosa PhzS (PaPzhS), a key enzyme in the biosynthesis of the virulence factor named pyocyanin. Ten novel thiazolidinone derivatives were synthesised and screened against PaPhzS, using two orthogonal assays. The biological results provided by these and 28 other compounds, whose synthesis had been described, suggest that the dihydroquinazoline ring, found in the previous hit (A-Kd ¼ 18 mM and LE ¼ 0.20), is not required for PaPzhS inhibition, but unsubstituted nitrogen at the thiazolidinone ring is. The molecular simplification approach, pursued in this work, afforded an optimised lead compound (13-5-(2,4-dimethoxyphenyl)thiazolidine-2,4dione) with 10-fold improvement in affinity (Kd¼ 1.68 mM) and more than 100% increase in LE (0.45), which follows the same inhibition mode as the original hit compound (competitive to NADH).
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