To discover potential sterol 14α-demethylase (CYP51)
inhibitors,
thirty-four unreported 4H-pyrano[3,2-c]pyridine derivatives were designed and synthesized. The assay results
indicated that most compounds displayed significant fungicidal activity
against Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Colletotrichum lagenarium, Botrytis
cinerea, Penicillium digitatum, and Fusarium oxysporum at 16 μg/mL.
The half maximal effective concentration (EC50) values
of compounds 7a, 7b, and 7f against B. cinerea were 0.326, 0.530,
and 0.610, respectively. Namely, they had better antifungal activity
than epoxiconazole (EC50 = 0.670 μg/mL). Meanwhile,
their half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values
against CYP51 were 0.377, 0.611, and 0.748 μg/mL, respectively,
representing that they also possessed better inhibitory activities
than epoxiconazole (IC50 = 0.802 μg/mL). The fluorescent
quenching tests of proteins showed that 7a and 7b had similar quenching patterns to epoxiconazole. The molecular
dynamics simulations indicated that the binding free energy of 7a and epoxiconazole to CYP51 was −35.4 and −27.6
kcal/mol, respectively.