Invasive fungal disease constitutes a growing health problem and development of novel antifungal drugs with high potency and selectivity are in an urgent need. In this study, a novel series of triazole derivatives containing different ester skeleton were designed and synthesized. Microdilution broth method was used to investigate antifungal activity. Significant inhibitory activity of compounds 5c, 5d, 5e, 5f, 5m and 5n was evaluated against the Candida albicans (I), Candida albicans clinical isolate (II), Candida glabrata clinical isolate (I), and Candida glabrata (II) with minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC80) values ranging from 2 to 16 µg/mL. Notably, compounds 5e and 5n showed the best inhibition against Candida albicans (II), Candida glabrata (I), and Candida glabrata (II) at the concentrations of 2 and 8 µg/mL, respectively. Molecular docking study revealed that the target compounds interacted with CYP51 mainly through hydrophobic and van der Waals interactions. The results indicated that these novel triazole derivatives could serve as promising leads for development of antifungal agents.
Keywords: antifungal activity; molecular docking; structure–activity relationship; synthesis; triazole.