Synthesis and biological evaluation of a diazepanone-based library of liposidomycins analogs as MraY inhibitors

New inhibitors of the bacterial tranferase MraY are described. A scaffold strategy based on the diazepanone central core of liposidomycins, natural inhibitors of MraY has been developed. It involves the introduction of key structural fragments required for biological activity on enantiopure diazepanones by reductive amination, esterification and glycosylation. Biological evaluation of these compounds on MraY enzyme revealed interesting inhibitory activity for compounds displaying three fragments on the scaffold: a palmitoyl chain, an aminoribose part and an alkyluracil moiety. The inhibitors were also evaluated on MurG enzyme. The best compounds resulted in inhibition with IC₅₀ values in the 100 μM range for one or the other enzyme.