Substituted 6,7-dimethoxy-5-oxo-2,3,5,9b-tetrahydrothiazolo[2,3-a]isoindole-3-1,1-dioxidederivatives with antimicrobial activity and docking assisted prediction of the mechanism of their antibacterial and antifungal properties.

BACKGROUND Although, a great number of the targets of antimicrobial therapy have been achieved, it remains among the first fields of pharmaceutical research, mainly because of the development of resistant strains. Docking analysis may be an important tool in the research for the development of more effective agents against specific drug targets or multitarget agents 1-3. METHODS In the present study, based on docking analysis, ten tetrahydrothiazolo[2,3-a]isoindole derivatives were chosen for evaluation of antimicrobial activity. RESULTS All compounds showed antibacterial activity against eight Gram positive and Gram negative bacterial species being in some cases, more potent than ampicillin and streptomycin against all species. The most sensitive bacteria appeared to be S. aureus, and En. cloacae while M. flavus, E. coli and P. aeruginosa were the most resistant ones. The compounds were also tested for their antifungal activity against eight fungal species. All compounds exhibited good antifungal activity better than reference drugs bifonazole (1.4 - 41 folds) and ketoconazole (1.1 - 406 folds) against all fungal species. In order to elucidate the mechanism of action docking studies on different antimicrobial targets were performed. CONCLUSION According to docking analysis, the antifungal activity can be explained by the inhibition of the CYP51 enzyme for most of the compounds with better correlation of the results obtained for the P.v.c. strain (linear regression between estimated binding Energy and log(1/MIC) with R 2 =0.867 and p=0.000091 or R 2 = 0.924, p= 0.000036, when compound 3 is excluded. INTRODUCTION