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Molecules ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 319
Author(s):  
Paulo A. F. Pacheco ◽  
Maria M. M. Santos

Human protozoan diseases represent a serious health problem worldwide, affecting mainly people in social and economic vulnerability. These diseases have attracted little investment in drug discovery, which is reflected in the limited available therapeutic arsenal. Authorized drugs present problems such as low efficacy in some stages of the disease or toxicity, which result in undesirable side effects and treatment abandonment. Moreover, the emergence of drug-resistant parasite strains makes necessary an even greater effort to develop safe and effective antiparasitic agents. Among the chemotypes investigated for parasitic diseases, the indole nucleus has emerged as a privileged molecular scaffold for the generation of new drug candidates. In this review, the authors provide an overview of the indole-based compounds developed against important parasitic diseases, namely malaria, trypanosomiasis and leishmaniasis, by focusing on the design, optimization and synthesis of the most relevant synthetic indole scaffolds recently reported.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adarsh V. Kalikadien ◽  
Evgeny A Pidko ◽  
Vivek Sinha

Exploration of the local chemical space of molecular scaffolds by post-functionalization (PF) is a promising route to discover novel molecules with desired structure and function. PF with rationally chosen substituents...


Author(s):  
David Kreutzer ◽  
Robin Gehrmann ◽  
Annámaria Kincses ◽  
Nikoletta Szemerédi ◽  
Gabriella Spengler ◽  
...  

Background: With constantly increasing resistance against the known antibiotics, the search for novel antibacterial compounds is a challenge. The number of synthetic antibacterial agents is limited. Materials & methods: We discovered novel small-molecule antibacterial agents that are accessible via a simple two-step procedure. The evaluation against Staphylococcus aureus showed antibacterial effects depending on the substituent positioning at the residues of the molecular scaffold. Additionally, we investigated the potential of the compounds to increase the antibacterial activity of tetracycline. Results: The most effective antibacterial compounds possessed a 3-methoxy function at an aromatic residue. In combination with tetracycline, we found a strong effect for a few compounds in boosting the antibacterial activity, so the first promising lead compounds with dual activities could be identified.


2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 990-996
Author(s):  
Mohamed A. Salem ◽  
Samir Y. Abbas ◽  
Marwa A. M. Sh. El-Sharief ◽  
Mohamed H. Helal ◽  
Moustafa A. Gouda ◽  
...  

One of the best ways to design new biocidal agents is synthesizing hybrid molecules by combining two or more bioactive moieties in a single molecular scaffold. So, new series of pyrroles bearing a thiazole moiety were synthesized using 1-methyl-1H-pyrrole-2-carbaldehyde thiosemicarbazones 1a–c. Cyclization of thiosemicarbazone derivatives 1a–c with ethyl chloroacetate, ethyl 2-chloropropanoate, chloroacetone and phenacyl bromide afforded the corresponding thiazolidin-4-ones 2a–c, 5-methylthiazolidin-4-ones 3a–c, 4-methyl-2,3-dihydrothiazoles 4a–c, and 4-phenyl-2,3-dihydrothiazoles 5a–c, respectively. The antimicrobial activity of the new thiazole derivatives was evaluated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaofan He ◽  
Kaixian Wang ◽  
Yuanyuan Gao ◽  
Chen Wang ◽  
Leina Li ◽  
...  

The World Health Organization predicts that infertility will be the third major health threat after cancer and cardiovascular disease, and will become a hot topic in medical research. Studies have shown that epigenetic changes are an important component of gametogenesis and related reproductive diseases. Epigenetic regulation of noncoding RNA (ncRNA) is appropriate and is a research hotspot in the biomedical field; these include long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), microRNA (miRNA), and PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA). As vital members of the intracellular gene regulatory network, they affect various life activities of cells. LncRNA functions as a molecular bait, molecular signal and molecular scaffold in the body through molecular guidance. miRNAs are critical regulators of gene expression; they mainly control the stability or translation of their target mRNA after transcription. piRNA functions mainly through silencing genomic transposable elements and the post-transcriptional regulation of mRNAs in animal germ cells. Current studies have shown that these ncRNAs also play significant roles in the reproductive system and are involved in the regulation of essential cellular events in spermatogenesis and follicular development. The abnormal expression of ncRNA is closely linked to testicular germ cell tumors, poly cystic ovary syndrome and other diseases. This paper briefly presents the research on the reproductive process and reproductive diseases involving ncRNAs.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adarsh Kalikadien ◽  
Evgeny A. Pidko ◽  
Vivek Sinha

Exploration of the local chemical space of molecular scaffolds by post-functionalization (PF) is a promising route to discover novel molecules with desired structure and function. PF with rationally chosen substituents based on known electronic and steric properties is a commonly used experimental and computational strategy in screening, design and optimization of catalytic scaffolds. Automated generation of reasonably accurate geometric representations of post-functionalized molecular scaffolds is highly desirable for data-driven applications. However, automated PF of transition metal (TM) complexes remains challenging. In this work a Python-based workflow, ChemSpaX, that is aimed at automating the PF of a given molecular scaffold with special emphasis on TMcomplexes, is introduced. In three representative applications of ChemSpaX by comparing with DFT and DFT-B calculations, we show that the generated structures have a reasonable quality for use in computational screening applications. Furthermore, we show thatChemSpaXgenerated geometries can be used in machine learning applications to accurately predict DFT computed HOMO-LUMO gaps for transition metal complexes.ChemSpaXis open-source and aims to bolster and democratize the efforts of the scientific community towards data-driven chemical discovery.


Metals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 1861
Author(s):  
Hassane Lgaz ◽  
Sourav Kr. Saha ◽  
Han-seung Lee ◽  
Namhyun Kang ◽  
Fatima Zahra Thari ◽  
...  

Copper is the third-most-produced metal globally due to its exceptional mechanical and thermal properties, among others. However, it suffers serious dissolution issues when exposed to corrosive mediums. Herein, two thiazolidinedione derivatives, namely, (Z)-5-(4-methylbenzylidene)thiazolidine-2,4-dione (MTZD) and (Z)-3-allyl-5-(4-methylbenzylidene)thiazolidine-2,4-dione (ATZD), were synthesized and applied for corrosion protection of copper in 3.5 wt.% NaCl medium. The corrosion inhibition performance of tested compounds was evaluated at different experimental conditions using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potentiodynamic polarization curves (PPC) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). EIS results revealed that the addition of studied inhibitors limited the dissolution of copper in NaCl solution, leading to a high polarization resistance compared with the blank solution. In addition, PPC suggested that tested compounds had a mixed-type effect, decreasing anodic and cathodic corrosion reactions. Moreover, surface characterization by AFM indicated a significant decrease in surface roughness of copper after the addition of inhibitors. Outcomes from the present study suggest that ATZD (IE% = 96%) outperforms MTZD (IE% = 90%) slightly, due to the presence of additional –C3H5 unit (–CH2–CH = CH2) in the molecular scaffold of MTZD.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0257338
Author(s):  
Peggy L. Brady ◽  
Mark S. Springer

Pseudoextinction analyses, which simulate extinction in extant taxa, use molecular phylogenetics to assess the accuracy of morphological phylogenetics. Previous pseudoextinction analyses have shown a failure of morphological phylogenetics to place some individual placental orders in the correct superordinal clade. Recent work suggests that the inclusion of hypothetical ancestors of extant placental clades, estimated by ancestral state reconstructions of morphological characters, may increase the accuracy of morphological phylogenetic analyses. However, these studies reconstructed direct hypothetical ancestors for each extant taxon based on a well-corroborated molecular phylogeny, which is not possible for extinct taxa that lack molecular data. It remains to be determined if pseudoextinct taxa, and by proxy extinct taxa, can be accurately placed when their immediate hypothetical ancestors are unknown. To investigate this, we employed molecular scaffolds with the largest available morphological data set for placental mammals. Each placental order was sequentially treated as pseudoextinct by exempting it from the molecular scaffold and recoding soft morphological characters as missing for all its constituent species. For each pseudoextinct data set, we omitted the pseudoextinct taxon and performed a parsimony ancestral state reconstruction to obtain hypothetical predicted ancestors. Each pseudoextinct order was then evaluated in seven parsimony analyses that employed combinations of fossil taxa, hypothetical predicted ancestors, and a molecular scaffold. In treatments that included fossils, hypothetical predicted ancestors, and a molecular scaffold, only 8 of 19 pseudoextinct placental orders (42%) retained the same interordinal placement as on the molecular scaffold. In treatments that included hypothetical predicted ancestors but not fossils or a scaffold, only four placental orders (21%) were recovered in positions that are congruent with the scaffold. These results indicate that hypothetical predicted ancestors do not increase the accuracy of pseudoextinct taxon placement when the immediate hypothetical ancestor of the taxon is unknown. Hypothetical predicted ancestors are not a panacea for morphological phylogenetics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tharindu A. Ranathunge ◽  
Mahesh Loku Yaddehige ◽  
Jordan H. Varma ◽  
Cameron Smith ◽  
Jay Nguyen ◽  
...  

The challenges faced with current fluorescence imaging agents have motivated us to study two nanostructures based on a hydrophobic dye, 6H-pyrrolo[3,2-b:4,5-b’]bis [1,4]benzothiazine (TRPZ). TRPZ is a heteroacene with a rigid, pi-conjugated structure, multiple reactive sites, and unique spectroscopic properties. Here we coupled TRPZ to a tert-butyl carbamate (BOC) protected 2,2-bis(hydroxymethyl)propanoic acid (bisMPA) dendron via azide-alkyne Huisgen cycloaddition. Deprotection of the protected amine groups on the dendron afforded a cationic terminated amphiphile, TRPZ-bisMPA. TRPZ-bisMPA was nanoprecipitated into water to obtain nanoparticles (NPs) with a hydrodynamic radius that was <150 nm. For comparison, TRPZ-PG was encapsulated in pluronic-F127 (Mw = 12 kD), a polymer surfactant to afford NPs almost twice as large as those formed by TRPZ-bisMPA. Size and stability studies confirm the suitability of the TRPZ-bisMPA NPs for biomedical applications. The photophysical properties of the TRPZ-bisMPA NPs show a quantum yield of 49%, a Stokes shift of 201 nm (0.72 eV) and a lifetime of 6.3 ns in water. Further evidence was provided by cell viability and cellular uptake studies confirming the low cytotoxicity of TRPZ-bisMPA NPs and their potential in bioimaging.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Candida Manelfi ◽  
Marica Gemei ◽  
Carmine Talarico ◽  
Carmen Cerchia ◽  
Anna Fava ◽  
...  

AbstractThe scaffold representation is widely employed to classify bioactive compounds on the basis of common core structures or correlate compound classes with specific biological activities. In this paper, we present a novel approach called “Molecular Anatomy” as a flexible and unbiased molecular scaffold-based metrics to cluster large set of compounds. We introduce a set of nine molecular representations at different abstraction levels, combined with fragmentation rules, to define a multi-dimensional network of hierarchically interconnected molecular frameworks. We demonstrate that the introduction of a flexible scaffold definition and multiple pruning rules is an effective method to identify relevant chemical moieties. This approach allows to cluster together active molecules belonging to different molecular classes, capturing most of the structure activity information, in particular when libraries containing a huge number of singletons are analyzed. We also propose a procedure to derive a network visualization that allows a full graphical representation of compounds dataset, permitting an efficient navigation in the scaffold’s space and significantly contributing to perform high quality SAR analysis. The protocol is freely available as a web interface at https://ma.exscalate.eu.


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