Novel inhibitors of an emerging target in Mycobacterium tuberculosis; substituted thiazolidinones as inhibitors of dTDP-rhamnose synthesis.
Babaoglu, K., Page, M.A., Jones, V.C., McNeil, M.R., Dong, C., Naismith, J.H., Lee, R.E.(2003) Bioorg Med Chem Lett 13: 3227-3230
- PubMed: 12951098 
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0960-894x(03)00673-5
- Primary Citation of Related Structures:  
1PM7 - PubMed Abstract: 
The emergence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, coupled with the increasing overlap of the AIDS and tuberculosis pandemics has brought tuberculosis to the forefront as a major worldwide health concern. In an attempt to find new inhibitors of the enzymes in the essential rhamnose biosynthetic pathway, a virtual library of 2,3,5 trisubstituted-4-thiazolidinones was created. These compounds were then docked into the active site cavity of 6'hydroxyl; dTDP-6-deoxy-D-xylo-4-hexulose 3,5-epimerase (RmlC) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The resulting docked conformations were consensus scored and the top 5% were slated for synthesis. Thus far, 94 compounds have been successfully synthesized and initially tested. Of those, 30 (32%) have > or =50% inhibitory activity (at 20 microM) in the coupled rhamnose synthetic assay with seven of the 30 also having modest activity against whole-cell M. tuberculosis.
Organizational Affiliation: 
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA.