From quinoline to quinazoline-based S. aureus NorA efflux pump inhibitors by coupling focused scaffold hopping approach and pharmacophore search

ChemMedChem. 2021 May 25. doi: 10.1002/cmdc.202100282. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTAntibiotic resistance breakers, such as efflux pump inhibitors (EPIs), represent a powerful alternative to the development of new antimicrobials. Recently, by using previously described EPIs, we developed pharmacophore models able to identify inhibitors of NorA, the most studied efflux pump of the Staphylococcus aureus. Herein, we reported a pharmacophore-based virtual screening of a library of new potential NorA EPIs generated by an in-silico scaffold hopping approach of the quinoline core. After chemical synthesis and biological evaluation of the best virtual hits, we found the quinazoline core as the best performing scaffold. Accordingly, we designed and synthesized a series of functionalized 2-arylquinazolines, which were further evaluated as NorA EPIs. Four of them exhibited a strong synergism with ciprofloxacin and a good inhibition of ethidium bromide efflux on resistant S. aureus strains coupled with low cytotoxicity against human cell lines, thus highlighting a promising safety profile.PMID:34032014 | DOI:10.1002/cmdc.202100282
Source: ChemMedChem - Category: Chemistry Authors: Source Type: research