Preparation and Herbicidal Properties of Substituted Quinoline-2-Carboxanilides
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Preparation and Herbicidal Properties of Substituted Quinoline-2-carboxanilides Josef Sujan1, Matus Pesko2, Tomas Gonec1, Jiri Kos1, Pavel Bobal1, Ales Imramovsky3, Lukas Placek4, Katarina Kralova5, Josef Jampilek1* 1 Department of Chemical Drugs, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Palackeho 1/3, 61242 Brno, Czech Republic; e-mail: [email protected] 2 Department of Ecosozology and Physiotactics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynska dolina Ch-2, 84215 Bratislava, Slovakia 3 Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Pardubice, Studentska 573, 53210 Pardubice, Czech Republic 4 Pragolab s.r.o., Nad Krocinkou 55/285, 19000 Prague 9, Czech Republic 5 Institute of Chemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynska dolina Ch-2, 84215 Bratislava, Slovakia * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Abstract: In this study a series of twenty-five substituted quinoline-2-carboxanilides were prepared. The procedures for synthesis of the compounds are presented. The compounds were tested for their activity related to inhibition of photosynthetic electron transport (PET) in spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) chloroplasts. For all the compounds the structure-activity relationships (SAR) are discussed. Keywords: quinoline-2-carboxanilides; PET inhibition; spinach chloroplasts; structure- activity relationships. INTRODUCTION A quinoline scaffold possesses unique physico-chemical properties and therefore it is present in many classes of biologically-active compounds [1-5]. A number of quinoline related compounds expressed antifungal, antibacterial and antituberculotic/antimycobacterial activity [4-13]. Some quinoline analogues showed also antineoplastic and antiviral activity [2,5,14-16]. In addition, according to the results reported recently, some new hydroxyquinoline derivatives also showed noteworthy herbicidal activities [9,11-14,17]. Both pharmaceuticals and pesticides are designed to target particular biological functions, and in some cases these functions overlap in their molecular target sites, or they target similar 1 processes or molecules. Modern herbicides express low toxicity against mammals. One of the reasons of such safety is the fact that mammals do not mostly have target sites of action. At present approximately 20 mechanisms of action of herbicides are known. It was determined that inhibitors of protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PROTOX), 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD) and glutamine synthetase (GS) inhibit these enzymes both in plants and mammals. However, the consequences of inhibition of the overlapping target site can be completely different for plants and animals. Therefore a compound that has lethal action on plants may be beneficial for mammals. Such chemical compounds are characterized by low toxicity on mammals as a result of quick metabolism and/or elimination of herbicide from the mammal system. Taking into consideration that mammals may also have molecular sites of action of herbicides, most pharmaceutical companies until recently had pesticide divisions, sometimes with a different name. All compounds generated by either division of the company were evaluated for both pesticide and pharmaceutical uses. Sometimes lead pesticides became pharmaceuticals and vice versa. However, little of this type of information was published and must usually be deduced from patent literature. One of the exceptions is fluconazole, a fungicide product discovered by the pharmaceutical sector that is now used as a pharmaceutical and patented as a crop production chemical [18-20]. Over 50% of commercially available herbicides act by reversible binding to photosystem II (PS II), a membrane-protein complex in the thylakoid membranes, which catalyses the oxidation of water and the reduction of plastoquinone [21], and thereby inhibit photosynthesis [22-24]. Some organic compounds, possessing an amide (-NHCO-) group, e.g. substituted benzanilides [25-28], pyridine- and/or pyrazine-2-carboxylic acids [29,30-33] or a wide variety of compounds containing the quinoline system [34-36] were found to interact with tyrosine radicals TyrZ and TyrD which are situated in D1 and D2 proteins on the donor side of PS II. Due to this interaction, interruption of the photosynthetic electron transport occurred. In the context of the previously-described azanaphtalenes [9,11-14,17] or various amides [26-28,30-32], new simple modifications of quinoline that can trigger interesting biological activity were investigated. The compounds were tested for their photosynthesis-inhibiting activity – the inhibition of photosynthetic electron transport in spinach chloroplasts (Spinacia oleracea L.). Relationships between the structure and the inhibitory activity related to inhibition of photosynthetic electron transport (PET) in spinach chloroplasts of the new compounds are discussed. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION All the studied compounds were prepared according to Scheme 1. Condensation of the chloride of quinoline-2-carboxylic acid with commercially available ring-substituted anilines yielded a series of twenty-five substituted amides 1-9c. Scheme 1. Synthesis of quinoline-2-carboxanilides 1-9c: (a) (COCl)2, (b) TEA, toluene. NH2 H a b N OH Cl + R N N N R O O O 1-9c R = H, OH, OCH3, CH3, F, Cl, Br, CF3, NO2 Hydrophobicities (log P/Clog P) of compounds 1-9c were calculated using two commercially available programs (ChemDraw Ultra 10.0 and ACD/LogP). The program ChemDraw did not resolve the varying lipophilicity values of individual positional isomers; thus the same 2 log P/Clog P data were calculated for derivatives a-c. The results are shown in Table 1. Compounds show a wide range of lipophilicity with log P (ACD/LogP) from 2.15 (compound 2c, 4-OH) to 4.25 (compound 8b, 3-CF3). Individual substituents in the anilide part of the discussed compounds also possess a wide range (from -0.39 to 1.72) of electronic properties expressed as Hammett's σ parameters [37,38]. Table 1. Calculated lipophilicities (log P/Clog P), electronic Hammett's σ parameters and IC50 [μmol/L] values related to PET inhibition in spinach chloroplasts of compounds 1-9c in comparison with 3-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)-1,1-dimethylurea (DCMU) standard. H N N R O log P/Clog P log P PET inhibition Comp. R σ [37] ChemOffice ACD/LogP IC50 [μmol/L] 1 H 3.35 / 3.6310 2.90 ± 0.34 85.1 0 2a 2-OH 2.96 / 3.1940 2.54 ± 0.36 16.3 -0.09 2b 3-OH 2.96 / 2.9640 2.55 ± 0.36 a 0.12 2c 4-OH 2.96 / 2.9640 2.15 ± 0.35 a -0.37 a 3a 2-OCH3 3.22 / 3.0147 2.80 ± 0.36 -0.39 [38] a 3b 3-OCH3 3.22 / 3.6047 3.06 ± 0.36 0.12 a 3c 4-OCH3 3.22 / 3.6047 2.85 ± 0.36 -0.27 4a 2-CH3 3.83 / 3.4800 3.36 ± 0.34 142.9 0.10 4b 3-CH3 3.83 / 4.1300 3.36 ± 0.34 100.6 -0.07 b 4c 4-CH3 3.83 / 4.1300 3.36 ± 0.34 -0.17 5a 2-F 3.50 / 3.2642 2.86 ± 0.44 98.1 0.47 5b 3-F 3.50 / 3.8642 3.38 ± 0.44 86.9 0.34 5c 4-F 3.50 / 3.8642 3.34 ± 0.44 75.3 0.06 6a 2-Cl 3.91 / 3.5842 3.41 ± 0.36 56.3 0.67 6b 3-Cl 3.91 / 4.4342 3.93 ± 0.37 91.9 0.37 6c 4-Cl 3.91 / 4.4342 3.89 ± 0.36 147.6 0.23 7a 2-Br 4.18 / 3.7042 3.58 ± 0.44 92.2 0.71 7b 3-Br 4.18 / 4.5842 4.10 ± 0.44 409.0 0.39 7c 4-Br 4.18 / 4.5842 4.06 ± 0.44 307.9 0.23 8a 2-CF3 4.27 / 3.2218 4.09 ± 0.42 109.4 – 8b 3-CF3 4.27 / 4.6718 4.25 ± 0.42 329.5 0.43 a 8c 4-CF3 4.27 / 4.6718 3.91 ± 0.41 0.74 b 9a 2-NO2 3.27 / 3.1072 3.15 ± 0.38 1.72 b 9b 3-NO2 3.27 / 3.5672 3.28 ± 0.38 0.71 b 9c 4-NO2 3.27 / 3.5672 3.36 ± 0.38 1.26 DCMU – – – 1.9 – aprecipitation during the experiment, binteraction with 2,6-dichlorophenol-indophenol (DCIPP) The activity of the evaluated quinoline derivatives related to inhibition of photosynthetic electron transport (PET) in spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) chloroplasts was moderate or low relative to the standard, see Table 1. The PET-inhibiting activity was expressed by negative logarithm of IC50 value (compound concentration in mol/L causing 50% inhibition of PET). 3 Compound 2a (2-OH) expressed the highest PET-inhibiting activity (IC50 = 16.3 µmol/L), and compound 7b (3-Br) expressed the lowest PET-inhibiting activity (IC50 = 409.0 µmol/L). Despite the relatively low inhibitory activity of the studied compounds, correlations between log (1/IC50) and the lipophilicity or electronic properties of the individual anilide substituents in compounds 1-9c were performed, see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. Based on the obtained results it is not possible to decide, whether some of ortho-, meta- or para-positions are preferred from the point of view of PET-inhibiting activity. Nevertheless, according to Fig. 1 it can be stated that the dependence of PET-inhibiting activity on the lipophilicity expressed as log P (ACD/LogP) decreases with increasing lipophilicity and the lipophilicity of the compounds was decisive for PET inhibition: log (1/IC50) = 5.952( 0.406) – 0.559( 0.113) log P r = 0.819, s = 0.211, F = 24.50, n =14 (1) Figure 1. Relationships between PET-inhibiting activity log (1/IC50) [mol/L] in spinach chloroplasts and lipophilicity (log P) of studied compounds 1-9c. 5.0 2a 4.5 6a 5c 1 5b 7a 6b 4.0 5a 4b 8a [mol/L]) 6c 50 4a 8b 3.5 7c log (1/IC 7b 3.0 2.5 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 4.2 4.4 log P [ACD/LogP] On the other hand, the biological activity was also affected by electronic σ properties of these anilide substituents, see Fig.