Applied Chemical Engineering

Coumarins from toxic phenol: An algorithm of their synthesis and assessment as biosafe, wide-spectrum, potent antimicrobial prospects

Yasser Fakri Mustafa

Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59429/ace.v7i3.5527

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Abstract

The existential war between pathogens and humans has heavily intensified during the last few decades. The former war side has been strengthened by developing various mechanisms of resistance to the currently-in-use antimicrobial drugs. To overcome the consequences of this development, it becomes an urgent global request to explore new potent, wider-ranging, and biosafe prospects as antimicrobial medications. In response to this request, this work was designed to include three parts. In the first one, coumarin-based compounds were created using a toxic material named 2-methyl-3,5-dinitrophenol as a starting block. The Pechmann condensation reaction was conducted to convert this building block to the precursor, P-MDNP, which was esterified with various phenols to create MDNPU1–MDNPU10. The antimicrobial function was evaluated in the second study part using a broth microdilution approach and three standards, including ciprofloxacin, metronidazole, and nystatin. The studied pathogens were four-infectious bacterial aerobes, four-infectious bacterial anaerobes, and two-infectious fungi. Given the third study part, the biosafety of the synthesized compounds was quantified on the three healthy cellular species, two non-infectious aerobic bacteriomers, and human blood processed in the lab. The synthesized compounds showed strong, wide-ranging, and biosafe antimicrobial properties versus the pathogens examined, according to the outcomes. Moreover, the study showed that some of these compounds demonstrated anti-anaerobic bacterial activity that is superior to metronidazole. Furthermore, the study found a connection between the number and distribution of chlorides in the off-side aromatic rings, antimicrobial activity, and biosafety. Finally, it is determined that the health-damaging effects of the toxicant under study can be mitigated by grafting it into coumarin frameworks. These are potent, ascribed to MDNPU9, and have great levels of biosafety and wider-ranging antimicrobial efficacy. Furthermore, this approach offered the chance to turn the health-detrimental effects of the nitrophenols into potential benefits. Coumarin-4-acetic acid and MDNPU9 can be employed as a synthetic fragment and a bioactive scaffold, respectively, to accomplish this.

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