Optical Modulation of Antibiotic Resistance by Photoswitchable Cystobactamids.

The rise of antibiotic resistance causes a serious health care problem, and its counterfeit demands novel, innovative concepts. The combination of photopharmacology, enabling a light-controlled reversible modulation of drug activity, with antibiotic drug design has led to first photoswitchable antibiotic compounds derived from established scaffolds. In this study, we converted cystobactamids, gyrase-inhibiting natural products with an oligoaryl scaffold and highly potent antibacterial activities, into photoswitchable agents by inserting azobenzene in the N-terminal part and/or an acylhydrazone moiety near the C-terminus, yielding twenty analogs that contain mono- as well as double-switches.

Synthetic studies of cystobactamids as antibiotics and bacterial imaging carriers lead to compounds with high efficacy.

There is an alarming scarcity of novel chemical matter with bioactivity against multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial pathogens. Cystobactamids, recently discovered natural products from myxobacteria, are an exception to this trend. Their unusual chemical structure, composed of oligomeric -aminobenzoic acid moieties, is associated with a high antibiotic activity through the inhibition of gyrase.

The nuclear export inhibitor aminoratjadone is a potent effector in extracellular-targeted drug conjugates.

The concept of targeted drug conjugates has been successfully translated to clinical practice in oncology. Whereas the majority of cytotoxic effectors in drug conjugates are directed against either DNA or tubulin, our study aimed to validate nuclear export inhibition as a novel effector principle in drug conjugates. For this purpose, a semisynthetic route starting from the natural product ratjadone A, a potent nuclear export inhibitor, has been developed.

Hydrogen bond catalyzed direct reductive amination of ketones.

[reaction: see text] A novel, biomimetic concept for the direct reductive amination of ketones is described that relies on selective imine activation by hydrogen bond formation. The mild, acid- and metal-free process requires only catalytic amounts of thiourea as hydrogen bond donor and utilizes the Hantzsch ester for transfer hydrogenation. The method allows the efficient synthesis of structurally diverse amines.