Tribenzoporphyrazines with dendrimeric peripheral substituents and their promising photocytotoxic activity against Staphylococcus aureus.

Infectious diseases constitute a serious problem for human health and life. Although many bacterial and fungal infections can be successfully cured by commonly used antibiotics, a new threat emerges in the form of microbial resistance. For this reason, researchers try to find not only new active pharmaceutical ingredients for conventional antibiotherapy but also try to develop new strategies of microbial inactivation. Photodynamic antimicrobial chemotherapy, which relies on reactive oxygen species generated in situ in the presence of a photosensitizer and with the light of an appropriate wavelength, is one of them. Porphyrazines have been considered as potential photosensitizers for anticancer and antimicrobial photodynamic therapy. In this study, three tribenzoporphyrazines with dendrimeric peripheral substituents were subjected to in vitro antimicrobial photocytotoxicity study. One magnesium(II) tribenzoporphyrazine with peripheral 3,5-bis(3,5-dimethoxybenzyloxy)benzylsulfanyl substituents was synthesized and subjected to physicochemical characterization using NMR, UV-Vis, and mass spectrometry techniques. In photochemical studies this molecule revealed moderate singlet oxygen generation ability (ΦΔDMF = 0.12, ΦΔDMSO = 0.13). The other two magnesium(II) tribenzoporphyrazines applied in the biological study were 4-[3,5-di(hydroxymethyl)phenoxy]butylsulfanyl-substituted tribenzoporphyrazine and 4-[3,5-bis(benzyloxy)benzyloxy]phenyl-substituted tribenzopyrazinoporphyrazine. For the assessment, three microbial strains were chosen: Gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, and fungal strain Candida albicans ATCC 10231. Very high activity against Staphylococcus aureus at low 10-6 M concentration was recorded for magnesium(II) tribenzoporphyrazines with peripheral 3,5-bis(3,5-dimethoxybenzyloxy)benzylsulfanyl and 4-[3,5-di(hydroxymethyl)phenoxy]butylsulfanyl substituents with calculated log reductions of 4.4 and 4.8, respectively. It is worth noting that magnesium(II) tribenzoporphyrazine with 4-[3,5-di(hydroxymethyl)phenoxy]butylsulfanyl substituents revealed also 3.2 log reduction in bacterial growth at the concentration 10-7 M.