A series of 2,5-disubstituted-1,3,4-thiadiazoles were synthesized, the compounds structures were elucidated and screened for the antituberculosis activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv using the BACTEC 460 radiometric system. Among the tested compounds, 2-phenylamino-5-(4-fluorophenyl)-1,3,4-thiadiazole 22 showed the highest inhibitory activity. The relationships between the structures of compounds and their antituberculosis activity were investigated by the Electronic-Topological Method (ETM) and feed forward neural networks (FFNNs) trained with the back-propagation algorithm. As a result of the approach, a system of pharmacophores and anti-pharmacophores has been found that effectively separates compounds of the examination set into groups of active and inactive compounds. The system can be applied to the screening and design of new active compounds possessing skeletons similar to those used in the present study.
Recent studies indicate that tubulin can be a host factor for vector‐borne flaviviruses like dengue (DENV) and Zika (ZIKV), and inhibitors of tubulin polymerization such as colchicine have been demonstrated to decrease virus replication. However, toxicity limits the application of these compounds. Herein we report prodrugs based on combretastatin and colchicine derivatives that contain an ester cleavage site for human carboxylesterase, a highly abundant enzyme in monocytes and hepatocytes targeted by DENV. Relative to their parent compounds, the cytotoxicity of these prodrugs was reduced by several orders of magnitude. All synthesized prodrugs containing a leucine ester were hydrolyzed by the esterase in vitro. In contrast to previous reports, the phenylglycine esters were not cleaved by human carboxylesterase. The antiviral activity of combretastatin, colchicine, and selected prodrugs against DENV and ZIKV in cell culture was observed at low micromolar and sub‐micromolar concentrations. In addition, docking studies were performed to understand the binding mode of the studied compounds to tubulin.
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