1,3,4-oxadiazole-indole hybrids: synthesis and their protective activity against oxidative stress

Abstract

Nitrogen containing compounds, such as oxadiazoles and indoles, are of great importance in medicine and industry. 1,3,4-Oxadiazoles are well known and widely studied by the researchers due to their broad range of chemical and biological properties such as antibacterial, anti-mycobacterial, antitumor, anti-viral and antioxidant activity, etc. as reported in the literature [1]. Furthermore, it has been proved that indole derivatives have shown to exhibit various pharmacological activities including anti-inflammatory, anti-HIV, antitubercular, antimalarial, anticonvulsant, antidiabetic, antihypertensive, analgesics, and antidepressant through targeting on various signalling pathways [2]. Altogether combining these two privileged scaffolds into one molecule is expected to result in compounds with enhanced biological properties. Recently, we presented an efficient synthetic path from commercially available methyl indole-3-acetate and its 5-methyl substituted analogue towards 2-[(1H-indol-3-yl)methyl]-5-(alkylthio)-1,3,4-oxadiazoles. Obtained 5-[(1H-indol-3-yl)methyl]-1,3,4-oxadiazole-2(3H)-thiones and their S-alkylated derivatives were screened for their biological activities and several compounds were revealed to possess protective activity against oxidative stress in vitro and in vivo [3]. Inspired by the obtained results, we intend to further elucidate protective potential of 1,3,4-oxadiazole-indole hybrids. Their library is currently being expanded in several directions which will be presented in detail.