The development of drug-resistant bacteria is currently one of the major challenges in medicine. Therefore, the discovery of novel lead structures for the design of antibacterial drugs is urgently needed. In this structure–activity relationship study, a library of ortho-, meta-, and para-fluorobenzoylthiosemicarbazides, and their cyclic analogues with 1,2,4-triazole scaffold, was created and tested for antibacterial activity against Gram-positive bacteria strains. While all tested 1,2,4-triazoles were devoid of potent activity, the antibacterial response of the thiosemicarbazides was highly dependent on substitution pattern at the N4 aryl position. The optimum activity for these compounds was found for trifluoromethyl derivatives such as 15a, 15b, and 16b, which were active against both the reference strains panel, and pathogenic methicillin-sensitive and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus clinical isolates at minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) ranging from 7.82 to 31.25 μg/mL. Based on the binding affinities obtained from docking, the conclusion can be reached that fluorobenzoylthiosemicarbazides can be considered as potential allosteric d-alanyl-d-alanine ligase inhibitors.
Docking of over 160 aminothiourea derivatives at the SARS-CoV-2 S-protein–human ACE2 receptor interface, whose structure became available recently, has been evaluated for its complex stabilizing potency and subsequently subjected to quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) analysis. The structural variety of the studied compounds, that include 3 different forms of the N–N–C(S)–N skeleton and combinations of 13 different substituents alongside the extensive length of the interface, resulted in the failure of the QSAR analysis, since different molecules were binding to different parts of the interface. Subsequently, absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) analysis on all studied compounds, followed by a toxicity analysis using statistical models for selected compounds, was carried out to evaluate their potential use as lead compounds for drug design. Combined, these studies highlighted two molecules among the studied compounds, i.e., 5-(pyrrol-2-yl)-2-(2-methoxyphenylamino)-1,3,4-thiadiazole and 1-(cyclopentanoyl)-4-(3-iodophenyl)-thiosemicarbazide, as the best candidates for the development of future drugs.
Despite vigorous studies, effective nonnucleoside inhibitors of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (NNRTIs) are still in demand, not only due to toxicity and detrimental side effects of currently used drugs but also because of the emergence of multidrug-resistant viral strains. In this contribution, we present results of docking of 47 inhibitors to 107 allosteric centers of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase. Based on the average binding scores, we have constructed QSAR equations to elucidate directions of further developments in the inhibitor design that come from this structural data.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00894-017-3489-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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