New vinyl-1,2,4-triazole derivatives as antimicrobial agents: Synthesis, biological evaluation and molecular docking studies

1,2,4-Triazole is a very important scaffold in medicinal chemistry due to the wide spectrum of biological activities and mainly antifungal activity of 1,2,4-triazole derivatives. The main mechanism of antifungal action of the latter is inhibition of 14-alpha-demethylase enzyme (CYP51). The current study presents synthesis and evaluation of eight triazole derivatives for their antimicrobial activity. Docking studies to elucidate the mechanism of action were also performed. The designed compounds were synthesized using classical methods of organic synthesis. The in vivo evaluation of antimicrobial activity was performed by microdilution method. All tested compounds showed good antibacterial activity with MIC and MBC values ranging from 0.0002 to 0.0069 mM. Compound 2 h appeared to be the most active among all tested with MIC at 0.0002-0.0033 mM and MBC at 0.0004-0.0033 mM followed by compounds 2f and 2g. The most sensitive bacterium appeared to be Xanthomonas campestris while Erwinia amylovora was the most resistant. The evaluation of antifungal activity revealed that all compounds showed good antifungal activity with MIC values ranging from 0.02 mM to 0.52 mM and MFC from 0.03 mM to 0.52 mM better than reference drugs ketoconazole (MIC and MFC values at 0.28-1.88 mM and 0.38 mM to 2.82 mM respectively) and bifonazole (MIC and MFC values at 0.32-0.64 mM and 0.64-0.81 mM). The best antifungal activity is displayed by compound 2 h with MIC at 0.02-0.04 mM and MFC at 0.03-0.06 mM while compound 2a showed the lowest activity. The results showed that these compounds could be lead compounds in search for new potent antimicrobial agents. Docking studies confirmed experimental results.