Streptogramins are potent antibiotics against numerous highly resistant pathogens and therefore are used in last-resort human therapy. These antibiotics are formed of both A- and B-group compounds named pristinamycins that differ in their basic primary structures. Although pristinamycin IIB is among the most interesting antibiotics in this family, it presents numerous problems related to its chemical structure, such as instability at most pH levels, weak solubility in water, and resistance by bacteria. As a response to the need for developing new antimicrobial agents, we have designed a new analog of pristinamycin IIB, based most importantly on the introduction of fluorine atoms. We conjectured indeed that the introduced modifications may solve the above-mentioned problems exhibited by pristinamycin IIB. Our multistep synthetic approach relies on few key reactions, namely a Wittig reaction, a Grubbs reaction, and dihydroxy, -difluoro API (Advanced Pharmaceutical Intermediate) synthesis
Tackling Pristinamycin IIB Problems: Synthetic Studies toward Some Fluorinated Analogs