Synthesis and Evaluation of the Antifungal and Toxicological Activity of Nitrofuran Derivatives.

Fungal diseases affect more than 1 billion people worldwide. The constant global changes, the advent of new pandemics, and chronic diseases favor the diffusion of fungal pathogens such as , , , , and . In this work, a series of nitrofuran derivatives were synthesized and tested against different fungal species; most of them showed inhibitory activity, fungicide, and fungistatic profile. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) values for the most potent compounds range from 0.48 µg/mL against (compound ) and (compounds and ) to 0.98 µg/mL against and (compounds , , , and , , , respectively), and 3.9 µg/mL against and strains (compounds and , respectively). In addition, all compounds showed low toxicity when tested in vitro on lung cell lines (A549 and MRC-5) and in vivo in larvae. Many of them showed high selectivity index values. Thus, these studied nitrofuran derivatives proved to be potent against different fungal species, characterized by low toxicity and high selectivity; for these reasons, they may become promising compounds for the treatment of mycoses.