Corannulene Amino Acid-Derived Water-Soluble Amphiphilic Buckybowls as Broad-Spectrum Membrane Targeting Antibacterial Agents

To date, the use of corannulene has been restricted in the area of material science, but its application in biomedical research has yet to be established due to its nonsolubility in an aqueous environment and synthetic infeasibility. Herein, we detail the development of a new family of highly curved pi-conjugated corannulene-containing unnatural alpha-amino acid (CAA) derivatives to overcome this challenge. These CAAs have been extended as novel constituents for the synthesis of corannulene-containing water-soluble cationic peptides (CCPs), which display inhibitory activity against broad-spectrum pathogenic bacteria along with drug-resistant bacteria via a membrane-damaging mechanism. Importantly, several of the synthesized peptides were found to be appreciably nonhemolytic against hRBCs and noncytotoxic against mammalian 3T3 cells. In vivo efficacy studies of the potent and least cytotoxic peptide 6a demonstrated clearance of bacteria from the spleen, liver, lung, and blood of mice infected with S. aureus ATCC 25923.