Quinoline Hydrazone Derivatives as New Antibacterials against Multidrug Resistant Strains

Abstract To develop novel antimicrobial agents a series of 2(4)‐hydrazone derivatives of quinoline were designed, synthesized and tested. QSAR models of the antibacterial activity of quinoline derivatives were developed by the OCHEM web platform using different machine learning methods. A virtual set of quinoline derivatives was verified with a previously published classification model of anti‐E. coli activity and screened using the regression model of anti‐S. aureus activity. Selected and synthesized 2(4)‐hydrazone derivatives of quinoline exhibited antibacterial activity against the standard and antibiotic‐resistant S. aureus and E. coli strains in the range from 15 to 30 mm by the diameter of growth inhibition zones. Molecular docking showed the complex formation of the studied compounds into the catalytic domain of dihydrofolate reductase with an estimated binding affinity from −8.4 to −9.4 kcal/mol.