On the basis of suggestions derived either from a pharmacophoric model for antitubercular agents or froma structure-activity relationship analysis of many pyrroles previously described by us, we report here thedesign and synthesis of new analogues of 1,5-(4-chlorophenyl)-2-methyl-3-(4-methylpiperazin-1-yl)methyl-1
H-pyrrole (BM212). Various substituents with different substitution patterns were added to both positions1 and 5 of the pyrrole nucleus to evaluate their influence on the activity toward
Mycobacterium tuberculosis(MTB) and atypical mycobacteria. Biological data showed that, although some nontuberculosis mycobacterialstrains were found to be sensitive, MIC values were higher than those found toward MTB. The best compound(1-(4-fluorophenyl)-2-methyl-3-(thiomorpholin-4-yl)methyl-5-(4-methylphenyl)-1
H-pyrrole,
5) possessed aMIC of 0.4
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g/mL (better than BM212 and streptomycin) and a very high protection index (160), betterthan BM212, isoniazid, and streptomycin (6, 128, and 128, respectively). Finally, molecular modeling studieswere performed to rationalize the activity of the new compounds in terms of both superposition onto apharmacophoric model for antitubercular compounds and their hydrophobic character.