Design and synthesis of new hybrid pyridine-imidazolium/benzimidazolium salts with antibacterial activity

We report here the design and synthesis of newly hybrid salts with pyridine and imidazole / benzimidazole scaffolds. The pharmacophore units of hybrid compounds are the pyridine nucleus and imidazole / benzimidazole moieties, which are connected via an aliphatic linker consisting in an amide group and a methylene fragment. The synthesis of hybrid salts were performed in three steps: N-acylation, N-alkylation and quaternization. The synthesized hybrid compounds were characterized by spectral analysis (FT-IR, NMR). The preliminary antibacterial assay reveals that the hybrid salts have a very good antibacterial activity against both gram positive and gram negative germs.