Development of microbicides for sexually transmitted diseases

Abstract

Amino acid-based surfactants constitute a class of cationic surfactants with excellent newlinesurface properties, wide biological activity, and low potential toxicity. Essential newlinestructural factors for their antimicrobial activity include both the length of the fatty newlineresidue and the presence of the protonated guanidine function. These features and the newlineuse of natural raw materials such as Arginine and fatty acids for their synthesis, make newlinethem interesting candidates as preservatives and antiseptics in pharmaceutical, food newlineand cosmetic formulations. newlineThe invention concerns the preparation of cationic surfactants derived from the newlinecondensation of an acid chloride, preferably a fatty acid with a number of carbon newlineatoms 8 and 18 with esterified amino acids, preferably basic-type amino acids, like newline(L)-Lysine and (L)-arginine, more preferably (L)-arginine. The method comprises a newlinefirst step in which the esterification of the amino acid with an alcohol is performed newlineand a second step for the condensation with a chloride of fatty acid, using Schotten newlineBaumann conditions. The cationic surfactants having C12 and C14 hydrophobic chain newlinelength are found to possess considerable antimicrobial activity and less toxic towards newlineL929-Mouse connective tissues. Cytotoxicity study of C14 analog in combination newlinewith another known antimicrobial agent, Monolaurin, showed excellent improvement newlinetowards lowering toxicity. newlineThe results obtained from the present study provide insights on the applicability and newlinethe safety of using cationic surfactants derived from Arginine in combination with newlineMonolaurin as microbicidal agent. Different formulations of both MAE and LAE with newlineMonolaurin can be possible agents for studying the Cytotoxicity with respect to newlinemammalian cells, suggesting that use of synergistic composition if found to be newlineeffective in further clinical trials, lower levels of both biocides (cationic surfactant newlineand monolaurin) could be effective as compared to said biocides alone. This could newlinereduce the effective cost of the formulation.