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.