Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of novel 3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinolinone derivatives as potential chitin synthase inhibitors and antifungal agents

Abstract A series of 3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinolinone derivatives contained butenediamide fragment were designed and synthesized. Their inhibition potency against chitin synthase and antimicrobial activities were screened in vitro. The enzymatic assays showed that all the synthesized compounds had inhibition potency against chitin synthase at concentration of 300 μg/mL. Compound 2d displayed excellent potency with inhibition percentage (IP) value of 82.3%, while IP value of the control polyoxin B was 87.5%. Compounds 2b, 2e and 2s whose IP values were above 70% showed good inhibition potency against chitin synthase. Moreover, the IC50 value of 2b was comparable with that of polyoxin B (0.09 mM). The Ki of compound 2b was 0.12 mM and the result from Lineweaver-Burk plot showed that 2b was non-competitive inhibitor to bind chitin synthase. The antifungal experiment showed that these compounds had excellent antifungal activity against fungal strains, especially for candida albicans. The antifungal activities against C .albicans of compounds 2b, 2d, 2e and 2l were comparable with that of fluconazole and were superior to that of polyoxin B. Meanwhile, the other compounds against C. albicans showed better antifungal activity (MIC 2 μg/mL) than polyoxin B except for compound 2n (MIC 4 μg/mL). The trial of drug combination use showed that these synthesized compounds had synergistic effects with fluconazole and polyoxin B. It indicated that these compounds were not competing with polyoxin B to bind with chitin synthase, which was also consistence with the result of enzymatic assays. The antibacterial experiment showed that these compounds had no activity against selected strains including three Gram-positive and three Gram-negative bacteria. These results showed that the designed compounds were chitin synthase inhibitors and had selective antifungal activity.