An Efficient Catalyst-Free One-Pot Synthesis and In Vitro Biological Activity Evaluation of Novel Isoquinoline Derivatives of Fatty Acids

There is good evidence that fatty acid derivatives have antibacterial activity and represent a promising approach to developing the next generation of antibacterial agents. In the present work, some new isoquinolin derivatives were synthesized via the Betti reaction. Three-component reaction of aryl aldehydes, 2,7-naphthalenediol and ammonium carboxylate of fatty acids with different chains in EtOH under reflux conditions offered related isoquinolin compounds in good to excellent yields. Some advantages of this procedure are short reaction times, free catalyst, high yield of products and easy work-up. The structure of synthesized compounds was characterized by IR, ¹H, and ¹³C NMR data as well as microanalysis results. In addition, these novel materials were evaluated for their biological activities against Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923) and Escherichia coli (ATCC 25922) bacteria. The obtained data confirm that isoquinolin derivatives 4c, 4e, 4f, 4g, 4m, 4n, 4p, 4q exert excellent antimicrobial activity against these tested bacterial strains.