There are many applications of small organic compounds, e.g. as drugs or as tools to study biological systems. Once a compound with interesting biological activity has been found, medicinal chemists typically synthesize small libraries of compounds with systematic differences to the initial “hit” compound. By screening the new ensemble of compounds for their ability to perturb the biological system, insights about the system can be gained. In the work presented here, various ways to synthesize small libraries of ring-fused 2‑pyridones have been developed. Members of this class of peptidomimetic compounds have previously been found to have a variety of biological activities, e.g. as antibacterial agents targeting virulence, and as inhibitors of the aggregation of Alzheimer b‑peptides. The focus in this work has been to alter the core skeleton, the central fragment, of the previously discovered biologically active 2‑pyridones and evaluate the biological effects of these changes. Several new classes of compounds have been constructed and their preparations have included the development of multi-component reactions and a method inspired by diversity-oriented synthesis. Some of the new compounds have been evaluated for their effect on the fibrillation of different amyloid proteins. Both the Parkinson-associated amyloid protein a-synuclein and the bacterial protein CsgA that is involved in bacterial biofilm formation are affected by subtle changes of the compounds’ central fragments. This is an example of the usefulness of central-fragment alterations as a strategy to probe structure-activity relationships, and the derived compounds may be used as tools in further study of the aggregation of amyloid proteins.

This Thesis is a characterization study on substances having potency as drugs as well as on a lipid based drug-delivery matrix. The optical properties of newly synthesized molecules with proven pilicide properties have been characterized with several spectroscopic methods. These methods include optical absorption and fluorescence as well as time-resolved fluorescence. Upon covalently linking compounds with high quantum yields of fluorescence to specific parts of the pilicide, the biological impact was found to increase for some of the derivatives. Furthermore, by expanding the aromatic part of the pilicide molecule, a significant increase in the inherent fluorescence was obtained. The S0-S1 absorption band for these molecules was found to originate from an impure electronic transition, vibronically promoted by intensity borrowing from higher electronic states. Included in this Thesis is the measurement of how deeply some in this class of newly synthesized molecules become situated when placed inside ganglioside GM1 micelles, and how the molecules’ reorientation is affected. By means of radiation-less energy transfer, it was shown that the molecules place themselves close to the hydrophobic-hydrophilic interface inside the GM1 micelles. As a consequence they are exposed to a densely packed environment, which inhibits the free tumbling of the molecule. This restricted tumbling could be measured by means of time-resolved depolarization experiments. The release of drug-like fluorescent molecules is investigated from a lipid mixture, which upon equilibrium with water forms a mixture of inverted hexagonal and cubic phases. The lipid matrix displayed an extended release over the course of weeks, in vitro, for molecules having a large variation in hydrophobicity.

New methods have been developed for the synthesis of bicyclic β-lactams and 2-pyridinones by combining acyl Meldrum’s acids and Δ2-thiazolines. The 2-pyridinones were synthesised both in solution using conventional heating or microwave assisted heating as well as by solid supported chemistry. The compounds (pilicides) were designed to interfere with the assembly of pili in uropathogenic E. coli by inhibiting the periplasmic chaperones. The affinity of the pilicides to the chaperones was investigated with surface plasmon resonance technique (Biacore) and with relaxation-edited 1H NMR spectroscopy experiments. Finally, the pilicides were investigated for their ability to inhibit pili formation in uropathogenic E. coli in a hemagglutination assay, where members of the 2-pyridinone family proved to be able to cause depiliation.

New strategies are needed to counter the growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. One such strategy is to design compounds that target bacterial virulence, which could work separately or in concert with conventional bacteriostatic or bactericidal antibiotics. Pilicides are a class of compounds based on a ring-fused 2-pyridone scaffold that target bacterial virulence by blocking the chaperone/usher pathway in E. coli and thereby inhibit the assembly of pili. This thesis describes the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of compounds based on the pilicide scaffold with the goal of improving the pilicides and expanding their utility. Synthetic pathways have been developed to enable the introduction of substituents at the C-2 position of the pilicide scaffold. Biological evaluation of these compounds demonstrated that some C-2 substituents give rise to significant increases in potency. X-ray crystallography was used to elucidate the structural basis of this improved biological activity. Furthermore, improved methods for the preparation of oxygen-analogues and C-7 substituted derivatives of the pilicide scaffold have been developed. These new methods were used in combination with existing strategies to decorate the pilicide scaffold as part of a multivariate design approach to improve the pilicides and generate structure activity relationships (SARs). Fluorescent pilicides were prepared using a strategy where selected substituents were replaced with fluorophores having similar physicochemical properties as the original substituents. Many of the synthesized fluorescent compounds displayed potent pilicide activities and can thus be used to study the complex interactions between pilicide and bacteria. For example, when E. coli was treated with fluorescent pilicides, it was found that the compounds were not uniformly distributed throughout the bacterial population, suggesting that the compounds are primarily associated to bacteria with specific properties. Finally, by studying compounds designed to inhibit the aggregation of Aβ, it was found that some compounds based on the pilicide scaffold inhibit the formation of the functional bacterial amyloid fibers known as curli; these compounds are referred to as 'curlicides'. Some of the curlicides also prevent the formation of pili and thus exhibit dual pilicide-curlicide activity. The potential utility of such 'dual-action' compounds was highlighted by a study of one of the more potent dual pilicide-curlicides in a murine UTI model were the compound was found to significantly attenuate virulence in vivo.