Drug-resistant pathogens pose a global challenge to public health as they cause diseases that are extremely difficult to cure. Metallo-beta-lactamases (MBLs) are a diverse set of zinc-containing enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis of beta-lactam drugs, including carbapenems, which are considered as the last resort to fight severe infections. To restore the activity of current beta-lactam antibiotics and to offer an orthogonal strategy to the discovery of new antibiotics, we have identified a series of polar N-aryl mercaptopropionamide derivatives as potent inhibitors of several class B1 MBLs. We have identified a hit structure with high selectivity restoring the effect of imipenem and reducing minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values up to 256-fold in resistant isolates from Escherichia coli. Furthermore, the combination of imipenem with our inhibitor showed in vivo efficacy in a Galleria mellonella model, increasing the survival rate of infected larvae by up to 31%.
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