In vitro Screening of chalcones against urease activity

Chalcones are natural compounds precursors of flavonoids on metabolic pathway in plants. These molecules have been showed a range of biological activities, such as antitumor, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, among others.1 Helicobacter pylori is a bacteria commonly found in digestive tract, and infections by H. pylori can lead to gastric ulcers in the stomach. Urease activity is the main virulence factor of H. pylori, responsible for pH changes on environment conditions for their development.2,3 Among chalcones with antibacterial activity, sofalcone is in clinical trials for treatment of H. pylori infection.4 In this view synthetic chalcones with structural diversity were screened against urease using Berthelot reaction5,6 (Figure 1). IC50 was determined for the compounds with higher enzyme inhibition (Table 1), and chalcones that exhibited effective antiurease activity (Figure 2) will be further investigated on H. pylori.