Structural modification of a specific antimicrobial lead against Helicobacter pylori discovered from traditional Chinese medicine and a structure-activity relationship study.

Psoralen (1a) was found to be a specific and potent antimicrobial lead against Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) from a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the bioassay directed isolation. A series of structurally diverse analogues of 1a were thus designed and synthesized to improve the antimicrobial potency, some of which showed more potent activities than the lead compound (1a) against H. pylori. Among them, compound 25a is 16-fold stronger (MIC = 0.39 μg/mL) than 1a (MIC = 6.25 μg/mL), and is even potent than the positive control metronidazole (MIC = 0.50 μg/mL). The in vitro antimicrobial activities against H. pylori of these structurally diverse analogues based on the scaffold of 1a have also led to an outline of structure-activity relationship.