The world is facing an antibiotic resistance crisis that will eventually result in millions of deaths across the world per year if current trends continue. In the United States alone, there are about 2.8 million people who contract an antibiotic resistant infection per year. The reason for this resistance is due to the misuse of antibiotics in humans and animals, which has accelerated the evolution of resistance in bacteria. This current health emergency has established that there is a need for the discovery and development of new effective antibiotics to treat multidrug resistant pathogens. This work aimed to determine whether depsidone, a natural product isolated from deep sea lichen, could be used as a potential treatment against the existing Gram-positive and Gram-negative antibiotic resistant bacteria. Prior results showed that the core structure of the depsidone, 6,7,6- fused ring system, proved to be essential to increasing the antibacterial activity. In this study, two depsidone derivatives were synthesized with the aim of specifically enhancing the structural diversity through modifying the functional groups on the outer aromatic rings. Structure activity relationship (SAR) studies against various resistant bacteria, similar to <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> strains, revealed that a suitable hydrophobic acyl tail in the phloroglucinol scaffold is a prerequisite for antibacterial activity. Owing to the SAR studies, the new series of depsidones analoges examined the effect that both long and short hydrophobic chains had on the overall antibacterial activity of the depsidone.

Evaluation of the antibacterial properties of depsidone analogs against gram negative and gram positive bacteria

ACS Spring 2022

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