Synthesis and antifungal properties of N-[(1,1'-biphenyl)-4-ylmethyl]-1H-imidazol-1-amine derivatives.

In the course of a study on 1H-imidazol-1-amine derivatives as antifungal agents, we found that N-[(1,1'-biphenyl)-4-ylmethyl]-N-[(2,4-dichlorophenyl)methyl]-1H-imidazol-1-amine (1a) exhibited promising activities. In order to explore more in detail the structure-activity relationship of this new class of antifungal agents, we report now the synthesis and the biological activity of new analogues (1b-k) of compound 1a. The synthesis was performed using N-[(1,1'-biphenyl)-4-ylmethyl]-1H-imidazol-1-amine as starting material which was reacted with the proper arylmethyl halide. Most of the newly synthesized imidazolamines exhibited both fungal growth inhibition activity and cellular selectivity.