A Novel Antimicrobial-Phytochemical Conjugate With Antimicrobial Activity Against Streptococcus uberis, Enterococcus faecium, and Enterococcus faecalis

Front Pharmacol. 2019 Nov 28:10:1405. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2019.01405. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the major threats to human and animal health. An effective strategy to reduce and/or delay antimicrobial resistance is to use combination therapies. Research in our laboratory has been focused on combination therapies of antimicrobials and phytochemicals and development of antimicrobial-phytochemical conjugates. In this study, we report the synthesis and antimicrobial activity of a novel sulfamethoxazole-gallic acid conjugate compound (Hybrid 1). Hybrid 1 not only showed much stronger activity than sulfamethoxazole towards Streptococcus uberis 19436, Enterococcus faecium 700221, and Enterococcus faecalis 29212, which were purchased from American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), but also exhibited a promising antimicrobial effect against two E. faecalis clinical isolates, one of which was multidrug-resistant. Further studies are warranted to establish the in vivo antimicrobial activity for Hybrid 1 and develop more potent sulfamethoxazole-gallic acid-based antimicrobial conjugates using hybrid 1 as a lead compound.

Keywords: Enterococcus; Streptococcus; antimicrobial resistance; antimicrobial–phytochemical conjugate; chemical synthesis; minimum inhibitory concentration.