Synthesis of novel benzimidazole functionalized chiral thioureas and evaluation of their antibacterial and anticancer activities

A small library of benzimidazole functionalized chiral thioureas was prepared starting from natural amino acids (S)-alanine, (S)-phenylalanine, (S)-valine and (S)-leucine and also their (R)-isomers and studied their antimicrobial activity against a various Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains. In this study, compounds 5g and 5j were found to exhibit good antibacterial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains such as Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Micrococcus luteus, Klebsiella planticola, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In the cytotoxicity study, thioureas derived from non-natural amino acids 5a–l showed good activity against human cancer cell lines A549, MCF7, DU145, HeLa, and no cytotoxicity was observed with their antipodes 6a–l.