Activity of Semi-Synthetic Mulinanes against MDR, Pre-XDR, and XDR Strains of <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i>

oleh: María Alejandrina Martínez-González, Luis Manuel Peña-Rodríguez, Andrés Humberto Uc-Cachón, Jorge Bórquez, Mario J. Simirgiotis, Hugo Brígido Barrios-García, Rogelio Hernández-Pando, Luis Alberto Loyola, Carlos Areche, Angel de Jesús Dzul-Beh, Jorge Alberto Barrios-Payán, Dulce Mata-Espinosa, Fabiola Escalante-Erosa, Karlina García-Sosa, Gloria María Molina-Salinas

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-12-01

Deskripsi

Tuberculosis causes more than 1.2 million deaths each year. Worldwide, it is the first cause of death by a single infectious agent. The emergence of drug-resistant strains has limited pharmacological treatment of the disease and today, new drugs are urgently needed. Semi-synthetic mulinanes have previously shown important activity against multidrug-resistant (MDR) <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i>. In this investigation, a new set of semi-synthetic mulinanes were synthetized, characterized, and evaluated for their in vitro activity against three drug-resistant clinical isolates of <i>M. tuberculosis</i>: MDR, pre-extensively Drug-Resistant (pre-XDR), and extensively Drug-Resistant (XDR), and against the drug-susceptible laboratory reference strain H37Rv. Derivative 1a showed the best anti-TB activity (minimum inhibitory concentration [MIC] = 5.4 µM) against the susceptible strain and was twice as potent (MIC = 2.7 µM) on the MDR, pre-XDR, and XDR strains and also possessed a bactericidal effect. Derivative 1a was also tested for its anti-TB activity in mice infected with the MDR strain. In this case, 1a produced a significant reduction of pulmonary bacilli loads, six times lower than the control, when tested at 0.2536 mg/Kg. In addition, 1a demonstrated an adjuvant effect by shortening second-line chemotherapy. Finally, the selectivity index of >15.64 shown by 1a when tested on Vero cells makes this derivative an important candidate for future studies in the development of novel antitubercular agents.