Facile Synthesis of Amino Acid Decorated Water-Soluble Fullerene Derivatives with Anti-influenza Activity

Herein, we present a facile synthesis of amide-type water-soluble fullerene derivatives decorated with five residues of amino acids. As compared to the previously developed approaches, the proposed method enables usage of a broad range of amino acids, including those unstable under Friedel-Crafts reaction conditions. Furthermore, it is fully tolerant to the nature of the sixth addend X in C60R5X precursor compounds and allows one to obtain fullerene derivatives with X=Cl, H, alkyl. The synthesized amide-type water-soluble fullerene derivatives demonstrated promising antiviral activities against rimantadine-resistant influenza A/Puerto Rico/8/34 (H1N1) virus in vitro.