Van der Kooy, F: The medicinal and chemical aspects of napht

The antimycobacterial activity of several naphthoquinones initiated this study into the occurrence, chemistry and biological activity of these compounds. This book deals with the traditional use of plants to treat TB-like symptoms and attempts to establish a link between naphthoquinones and these plants with the use of a metabolomics approach. It furthermore deals with the chemical synthesis of the main lead compound and some derivatives. This is followed by the often neglected stability studies performed on the main active compounds. These studies showed that rapid breakdown of lead compounds do occur during activity and toxicity testing, and that this leads to false positives and negatives. The activity and toxicity of the main active compounds were tested using three models: Vero cells, mice and Musca domestica. The last chapters deal with the investigation of a structure activity relationship and propose a mechanism of action for these naphthoquinones. It was found that this class of compounds interfere with the electron transport chain by inhibiting menaquinone to bind to the cytochrome complex. This indicates that these compounds might become a new class of antibiotics.