Synthesis of antimalarial compounds fosmidomycin and FR900098 through N- or P-alkylation reactions

Synthesis and Antiplasmodial Activity of Novel Fosmidomycin Derivatives and Conjugates with Artemisinin and Aminochloroquinoline

Malaria, despite many efforts, remains among the most problematic infectious diseases worldwide, mainly due to the development of drug resistance by Plasmodium falciparum. The antibiotic fosmidomycin (FSM) is also known for its antimalarial activity by targeting the non-mevalonate isoprenoid synthesis pathway, which is essential for the malaria parasites but is absent in mammalians. In this study, we synthesized and evaluated against the chloroquine-resistant P. falciparum FcB1/Colombia strain, a series of FSM analogs, derivatives, and conjugates with other antimalarial agents, such as artemisinin (ART) and aminochloroquinoline (ACQ). The biological evaluation revealed four new compounds with higher antimalarial activity than FSM: two FSM-ACQ derivatives and two FSM-ART conjugates, with 3.5-5.4 and 41.5-23.1 times more potent activities than FSM, respectively.

Synthesis of Hydroxamic Acid Derivatives Using Blocked (Masked) O-Isocyanate Precursors

Hydroxamic acids are present in a several pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Synthetic strategies providing access to hydroxamic acid derivatives remain limited, typically requiring the use of nucleophilic hydroxylamine reagents. Herein, a synthesis of hydroxamates from unactivated carboxylic acids is reported making use of rare blocked (masked) O-substituted isocyanates. The applicability of this transformation was highlighted by targeting the synthesis of vorinostat and belinostat derivatives.

Growth medium-dependent antimicrobial activity of early stage MEP pathway inhibitors

The in vivo microenvironment of bacterial pathogens is often characterized by nutrient limitation. Consequently, conventional rich in vitro culture conditions used widely to evaluate antibacterial agents are often poorly predictive of in vivo activity, especially for agents targeting metabolic pathways. In one such pathway, the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway, which is essential for production of isoprenoids in bacterial pathogens, relatively little is known about the influence of growth environment on antibacterial properties of inhibitors targeting enzymes in this pathway. The early steps of the MEP pathway are catalyzed by 1-deoxy-d-xylulose 5-phosphate (DXP) synthase and reductoisomerase (IspC). The in vitro antibacterial efficacy of the DXP synthase inhibitor butylacetylphosphonate (BAP) was recently reported to be strongly dependent upon growth medium, with high potency observed under nutrient limitation and exceedingly weak activity in nutrient-rich conditions. In contrast, the well-known IspC inhibitor fosmidomycin has potent antibacterial activity in nutrient-rich conditions, but to date, its efficacy had not been explored under more relevant nutrient-limited conditions. The goal of this work was to thoroughly characterize the effects of BAP and fosmidomycin on bacterial cells under varied growth conditions. In this work, we show that activities of both inhibitors, alone and in combination, are strongly dependent upon growth medium, with differences in cellular uptake contributing to variance in potency of both agents. Fosmidomycin is dissimilar to BAP in that it displays relatively weaker activity in nutrient-limited compared to nutrient-rich conditions. Interestingly, while it has been generally accepted that fosmidomycin activity depends upon expression of the GlpT transporter, our results indicate for the first time that fosmidomycin can enter cells by an alternative mechanism under nutrient limitation. Finally, we show that the potency and relationship of the BAP-fosmidomycin combination also depends upon the growth medium, revealing a striking loss of BAP-fosmidomycin synergy under nutrient limitation. This change in BAP-fosmidomycin relationship suggests a shift in the metabolic and/or regulatory networks surrounding DXP accompanying the change in growth medium, the understanding of which could significantly impact targeting strategies against this pathway. More generally, our findings emphasize the importance of considering physiologically relevant growth conditions for predicting the antibacterial potential MEP pathway inhibitors and for studies of their intracellular targets.

Combinatorial pathway engineering for optimized production of the anti-malarial FR900098

As resistance to current anti-malarial therapeutics spreads, new compounds to treat malaria are increasingly needed. One promising compound is FR900098, a naturally occurring phosphonate. Due to limitations in both chemical synthesis and biosynthetic methods for FR900098 production, this potential therapeutic has yet to see widespread implementation. Here we applied a combinatorial pathway engineering strategy to improve the production of FR900098 in Escherichia coli by modulating each of the pathway's nine genes with four promoters of different strengths. Due to the large size of the library and the low screening throughput, it was necessary to develop a novel screening strategy that significantly reduced the sample size needed to find an optimal strain. This was done by using biased libraries that localize searching around top hits and home in on high-producing strains. By incorporating this strategy, a significantly improved strain was found after screening less than 3% of the entire library. When coupled with culturing optimization, a strain was found to produce 96 mg/L, a 16-fold improvement over the original strain. We believe the enriched library method developed here can be used on other large pathways that may be difficult to engineer by combinatorial methods due to low screening throughput.