Introduction:
Heterocycles containing nitrogen, oxygen and sulphur have diverse and exceptional therapeutical and industrial significance. Particularly sulfonamides containing pyrrolidine and thiophene moieties constitute an important class of drugs and display a variety of pharmacological activities.

Aim:
To design, synthesize and characterize substituted sulfonamides and evaluate their in vitro antimicrobial activity and in silico HMG-CoA reductase inhibitory activity.

Material and methods:
The synthetic investigations have been well supported by elemental analysis data and standard modern spectroscopic techniques. The compounds were evaluated for their in vitro antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus NCCS 2079, Bacillus cereus NCCS 2106, Escherichia coli NCCS 2065, Aspergillus niger NCCS 1196 and Candida albicans NCCS 2106. In silico studies were done against 3VKK (PDB Id). Pharmacophore mapping studies were reported to analyze the important pharmacophore features and to predict the quantitative structure-activity relationship.

Results and discussion:
The antibacterial activity data revealed that compounds of 8 series were more active than the compounds of 7 series followed by compounds of series 6. In silico studies revealed that HMG-CoA reductase inhibitory activity of these drugs is of the order 'a > b > c > d > e > f'.

Conclusions:
Antibacterial activity studies indicate that nitro and halo substituted sulfonamides of each series were more active than the other members. A detailed analysis from virtual screening data led to the conclusion that all these compounds are potential HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors and within each series, nitro substituted sulfonamide has demonstrated least drug score.