Investigating the antibacterial potency of Schiff base derivatives as potential agents for urinary tract infection: DFT, solvation, molecular docking and pharmacokinetic studies

Abstract Owing to the growing prevalence of uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) strains that are more recently resistant to last-line antibiotic treatments, such as carbapenems and colistin drugs, urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a prime example of the antibiotic resistance crisis and emphasize the need for new approaches to treat and prevent bacterial infections. The antibacterial effect of 4-((5-bromo-2-hydroxybenzlidene) amino)-1,5-dimethyl1-2-phenyl-1,2-dihydro-3H-pyrazol-3-one (BDP), a Schiff base derivative, was tested against UPEC, a bacterium responsible for urinary tract infections. This Schiff base compound was optimized in five phases at the ωB97XD/6–311++G(2d,2p) level of theory; therefore, density functional theory studies, spectroscopic analysis, molecular docking analysis, and pharmacokinetic prediction were employed. The stability of the BDP compound was predicted via geometric structural studies, natural bond orbital (NBO) theory, quantum chemical descriptors, and spectral studies such as FT-IR and UV‒vis studies. The ab initio calculation of NBO revealed greater stability of the compound despite the solvation effects of DMSO, methanol, ethanol, and water. This claim was supported by frontier molecular orbital prediction, where the energy gaps were 6.60 eV, 7.45 eV, 7.45 eV, 7.43 eV, and 7.44 eV for the BDP compound present in the gas phase, water, DMSO, ethanol and methanol, respectively. The molecular docking results revealed the antibacterial efficacy of BDP. 5C5Z + BDP and 5VQ5+BDP interactions produced −4.5 and −5.4 kcal/mol binding affinities respectively. BDP displayed stronger interaction with 5VQ5 than with 5C5Z and had better docking activities than FOS. Overall, result has shown that BDP is a potential therapeutic candidate for the treatment of UPEC caused UTIs and has the potential to mitigate the challenges associated with urinary tract infections, hence, should be considered a promising candidate for UTI treatment.