Novel benzoic thiazolidin-4-one derivatives targeting DevR/DosR dormancy regulator of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

•Synthesis of 33 new analogues of substituted benzoic thiazolidin-4-one.•Development of high throughput assay for screening DevR inhibitors in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.•Identification of N5, N6 and N11 as specific and non-toxic inhibitors of DevR interfering with the hypoxic viability of mycobacteria.•In silico docking analysis suggests N5, N6 and N11 binding to common pocket in C-terminal domain of DevR. The interaction of N5, N6 and N11 with DevR was experimentally confirmed using thermal shift assay.