Synthesis and Cheminformatics-Directed Antibacterial Evaluation of Echinosulfonic Acid-Inspired Bis-Indole Alkaloids

Molecules
2024.0

Abstract

Synthetic efforts toward complex natural product (NP) scaffolds are useful ones, particularly those aimed at expanding their bioactive chemical space. Here, we utilised an orthogonal cheminformatics-based approach to predict the potential biological activities for a series of synthetic bis-indole alkaloids inspired by elusive sponge-derived NPs, echinosulfone A (1) and echinosulfonic acids A-D (2-5). Our work includes the first synthesis of desulfato-echinosulfonic acid C, an alpha-hydroxy bis(3 '-indolyl) alkaloid (17), and its full NMR characterisation. This synthesis provides corroborating evidence for the structure revision of echinosulfonic acids A-C. Additionally, we demonstrate a robust synthetic strategy toward a diverse range of alpha-methine bis(3 '-indolyl) acids and acetates (11-16) without the need for silica-based purification in either one or two steps. By integrating our synthetic library of bis-indoles with bioactivity data for 2048 marine indole alkaloids (reported up to the end of 2021), we analyzed their overlap with marine natural product chemical diversity. Notably, the C-6 dibrominated alpha-hydroxy bis(3 '-indolyl) and alpha-methine bis(3 '-indolyl) analogues (11, 14, and 17) were found to contain significant overlap with antibacterial C-6 dibrominated marine bis-indoles, guiding our biological evaluation. Validating the results of our cheminformatics analyses, the dibrominated alpha-methine bis(3 '-indolyl) alkaloids (11, 12, 14, and 15) were found to exhibit antibacterial activities against methicillin-sensitive and -resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Further, while investigating other synthetic approaches toward bis-indole alkaloids, 16 incorrectly assigned synthetic alpha-hydroxy bis(3 '-indolyl) alkaloids were identified. After careful analysis of their reported NMR data, and comparison with those obtained for the synthetic bis-indoles reported herein, all of the structures have been revised to alpha-methine bis(3 '-indolyl) alkaloids.

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