Erythromycin A is normally formulated for children as its 2'-ethyl succinate, a taste-free prodrug. Unfortunately, the prodrug hydrolyzes at a measurable rate in the medicine bottle, leading to the vile-tasting erythromycin. We have prepared derivatives of erythromycin B as putative paediatric prodrugs, taking advantage of the much improved acid stability of erythromycin B relative to erythromycin A. Thus, erythromycin B enol ether ethyl succinate is very poorly soluble in water, and its hydrolysis is undetectable in conditions resembling the medicine bottle. In acid, however, it converts rapidly to erythromycin B 2'-ethyl succinate, and this is in turn hydrolyzed to erythromycin B in neutral and basic conditions. Derivatives of erythromycin B enol ether are therefore proposed as taste-free proprodrugs of erythromycin B.
Erythromycin B is structurally very similar to erythromycin A, and also shares its clinically important antibacterial activity. Its potential advantage is that it is much more stable to acid. Both compounds are susceptible to 6-9-enol ether formation, involving loss of a proton from C-8. The enol ethers lack antibacterial activity and can give rise to unpleasant gut motilide side-effects. Our previous work on degradation kinetics revealed that the formation of erythromycin B enol ether from erythromycin B is subject to a large deuterium isotope effect. We therefore synthesized 8-d-erythromycin B (in 87% yield) in the hope that acid-catalysed enol ether formation would be reduced, relative to erythromycin B. In a range of microbiological and biochemical assays, deuteriation did not appear to compromise the efficacy of the drug. Degradation studies showed, however, that incorporation of deuterium into erythromycin B reduces (though does not completely suppress) enol ether formation, providing the possibility of using a facile mono-deuteriation to reduce the gut motilide side-effects of the drug.
Octahedral tris-chelate complexes [M(II)(bpy)(3)](2+) (M = Ru or Os, bpy = 2,2'-bipyridyl), covalently attached to the 3'- and 5'-phosphates of two oligonucleotides, are juxtaposed when hybridized contiguously to a fully complementary DNA target. Visible metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (MLCT) excitation of the [Ru(II)(bpy)(3)](2+) unit leads to resonance energy transfer to the MLCT state of the [Os(II)(bpy)(3)](2+) moiety, with the energy transfer efficiency depending on the degree of hybridization. The extent of attenuation of the intense red luminescence from the Ru(II) chromophore hence allows highly sensitive structural probing of the assembly and constitutes a novel approach to DNA sensing which is capable of detecting mutations.
HyBeacons, novel DNA probes for ultra-rapid detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms, contain a fluorophore covalently attached via a linker group to an internal nucleotide. As the probe does not require a quencher or self-complementarity to function, this study investigates the molecular-level mechanism underlying the increase of fluorescence intensity on hybridization of HyBeacons with target DNA. Spectroscopic ultraviolet-visible and fluorimetric studies, combined with molecular dynamics simulations, indicate projection of the fluorophore moiety away from the target-probe duplex into aqueous solution, although specific linker-DNA interactions are populated. Based on evidence from this study, we propose that for HyBeacons, the mechanism of increased fluorescence on hybridization is due to disruption of quenching interactions in the single-stranded probe DNA between the fluorophore and nucleobases. Hybridization leads to an extended linker conformation, removing the fluorophore from the immediate vicinity of the DNA bases.
Erythromycin A is an established anti-bacterial agent against Gram-positive bacteria, but it is unstable to acid. This led to an evaluation of erythromycin B and its derivatives because these have improved acid stability. These compounds were investigated for their anti-malarial activities, by their in silico molecular docking into segments of the exit tunnel of the apicoplast ribosome from Plasmodium falciparum. This is believed to be the target of the erythromycin A derivative, azithromycin, which has mild anti-malarial activity. The erythromycin B derivatives were evaluated on the multi-drug (chloroquine, pyrimethamine, and sulfadoxine)-resistant strain K1 of P. falciparum for asexual growth inhibition on asynchronous culture. The erythromycin B derivatives were identified as active in vitro inhibitors of asexual growth of P. falciparum with low micro-molar IC50 values after a 72 h cycle. 5-Desosaminyl erythronolide B ethyl succinate showed low IC50 of 68.6 µM, d-erythromycin B 86.8 µM, and erythromycin B 9-oxime 146.0 µM on the multi-drug-resistant K1 of P. falciparum. Based on the molecular docking, it seems that a small number of favourable interactions or the presence of unfavourable interactions of investigated derivatives of erythromycin B with in silico constructed segment from the exit tunnel from the apicoplast of P. falciparum is the reason for their weak in vitro anti-malarial activities.
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