Novel inhibitors of an emerging target in <em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</em>; substituted thiazolidinones as inhibitors of dTDP-rhamnose synthesis

The emergence of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, coupled with the increasing overlap of the AIDS and tuberculosis pandemics has brought tuberculosis 1 0 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 greater than or equal to50% inhibitory activity (at 20 muM) in the coupled rhamnose synthetic assay with seven of the 30 also having modest activity against whole-cell M. tuberculosis. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.