DNA-polymerase inhibitors. Rifamycin derivatives.

Ten new derivatives of the antibiotic rifamycin with variable side chains at position 3 were synthesized. The inhibitory activity of these derivatives against DNA-polymerases isolated from avian myeloblastosis virus, E. coli and calf thymus were studied at various conditions. 3-(2,4,6-trinitrophenylhydrazone-(methyl) rifamycin SV is a strong inhibitor for all the polymerases tested and belongs to the C class inhibitors of reverse transcriptase. 3-(monoallylhydrazone-(methyl) rifamycin SV possesses a selective action on polymerases: at 0.1 mg/ml concentration it almost completely inhibits the reverse transcriptase and less than half of the bacterial and eukaryotic enzymes. A drug is found which strongly inhibits the DNA-polymerases from E. coli and calf thymus and weakly the viral enzyme. The inhibitory effect on reverse transcriptase is independent of the choice of template-primer; it could be overcome by the addition of excess enzyme but not of excess template-primer; the inhibition could be completely reversed by dilution of the drug-enzyme mixture. From Lineweaver-Burk analysis, the inhibition is noncompetitive with respect to the template-primer and, thus the drugs bind to the site different from the active site for the template-primer. From protective action of the template-primer and other data it might be suggested that the rifamycin derivatives act at an early step(s) in DNA synthesis catalyzed by reverse transcriptase. The obtained data are in agreement with the results for other derivatives of rifamycin SV described in literature.