Antimycobacterial natural products: synthesis and preliminary biological evaluation of the oxazole-containing alkaloid texaline

Texaline, an antimycobacterial oxazole-containing alkaloid previously isolated from Amyris texana and A. elemifera, and related compounds have been synthesized in order to explore aspects of the structure–antituberculosis activity relationship. While texaline was found to be inactive in our assays, simpler diaryloxazoles were more active whilst also exhibiting modest toxic selectivity, leading to their identification as potential lead compounds.