Tautomerism and spectroscopic properties of the immunosuppressant azathioprine

Photodegradation of Azathioprine in the Presence of Sodium Thiosulfate

The effect of sodium thiosulfate (ST) on the photodegradation of azathioprine (AZA) was analyzed by UV-VIS spectroscopy, photoluminescence (PL), FTIR spectroscopy, Raman scattering, X-ray photoelectron (XPS) spectroscopy, thermogravimetry (TG) and mass spectrometry (MS). The PL studies highlighted that as the ST concentration increased from 25 wt.% to 75 wt.% in the AZA:ST mixture, the emission band of AZA gradual downshifted to 553, 542 and 530 nm. The photodegradation process of AZA:ST induced: (i) the emergence of a new band in the 320–400 nm range in the UV-VIS spectra of AZA and (ii) a change in the intensity ratio of the photoluminescence excitation (PLE) bands in the 280–335 and 335–430 nm spectral ranges. These changes suggest the emergence of new compounds during the photo-oxidation reaction of AZA with ST. The invoked photodegradation compounds were confirmed by studies of the Raman scattering, the FTIR spectroscopy and XPS spectroscopy through: (i) the downshift of the IR band of AZA from 1336 cm⁻¹ to 1331 cm⁻¹, attributed to N-C-N deformation in the purine ring; (ii) the change in the intensity ratio of the Raman lines peaking at 1305 cm⁻¹ and 1330 cm⁻¹ from 3.45 to 4.57, as the weight of ST in the AZA:ST mixture mass increased; and (iii) the emergence of a new band in the XPS O1s spectrum peaking at 531 eV, which was associated with the C=O bond. Through correlated studies of TG-MS, the main key fragments of ST-reacted AZA are reported.

Intramolecular Charge Transfer in the Azathioprine Prodrug Quenches Intersystem Crossing to the Reactive Triplet State in 6-Mercaptopurine†

The thiopurine prodrugs 6-mercaptopurine and azathioprine are among the world's essential medications for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, immunosuppression and several autoimmune conditions. Thiopurine prodrugs are efficient UVA absorbers and singlet oxygen generators and the long-term treatment with these prodrugs correlates with a high incidence of sunlight-induced skin cancer in patients. In this contribution, we show that the electronic relaxation mechanisms and photochemical properties of azathioprine are remarkably different from those of 6-mercaptopurine upon absorption of UVA radiation. UVA excitation of 6-mercaptopurine results in nearly 100% triplet yield and up to 30% singlet oxygen generation, whereas excitation of azathioprine with UVA leads to triplet yields of 15-3% depending on pH of the aqueous solution and <1% singlet oxygen generation. While photoexcitation of 6-mercaptopurine and other thiopurine prodrugs can facilitate oxidatively generated cell damage, azathioprine's poor photosensitization ability reveals the use of interchromophoric charge-transfer interactions for the molecular design of photostable prodrugs exhibiting a remarkable reduction in photocytotoxic side effects before drug metabolization.

Modeling the antisymmetric and symmetric stretching vibrational modes of aqueous carboxylate anions

The infrared spectra of six aqueous carboxylate anions have been calculated at the M05-2X/cc-pVTZ level of theory with the SMD solvent model, and validated against experimental data from the literature over the region of 1700 cm(-1) to 1250 cm(-1); this region corresponds to the stretching modes of the carboxylate group, and is often interrogated when probing bonding of carboxylates to other species and surfaces. The anions studied here were formate, acetate, oxalate, succinate, glutarate and citrate. For the lowest energy conformer of each anion, the carboxylate moiety antisymmetric stretching peak was predicted with a mean signed error of only 4 cm(-1) using the SMD solvent model, while the symmetric peak was slightly overestimated. Performing calculations in vacuum and scaling was found to generally over-predict the antisymmetric vibrational frequencies and under predict the symmetric peak. Different conformers of the same anion were found to have only slightly different spectra in the studied region and the inclusion of explicit water molecules was not found to significantly change the calculated spectra when the implicit solvent model is used. Overall, the use of density functional theory in conjunction with an implicit solvent model was found to result in infra-red spectra that are the best reproduction of the features found experimentally for the aqueous carboxylate ions in the important 1700 cm(-1) to 1250 cm(-1) region. The development of validated model chemistries for simulating the stretching modes of aqueous carboxylate ions will be valuable for future studies that investigate how carboxylate anions complex with multivalent metal cations and related species in solution.

Experimental and DFT studies on the vibrational, electronic spectra and NBO analysis of thiamethoxam

Vibrational and electronic spectral measurements were performed for 3-(2-chloro-1,3-thiazol-5-ylmethyl)-5-methyl-1,3,5-oxadiazinan-4-ylidene(nitro) amine (thiamethoxam). Optimized geometrical structure and harmonic vibrational frequencies were calculated with ab initio RHF and DFT (B3LYP, CAMB3LYP, M06 and PBE1PBE) methods with 6-311++G (d, p) basis set. Complete assignments of the observed spectra were proposed. The absorption spectra of the compound were computed in gas-phase using TD-B3LYP/6-311++G (d, p) approach and H2O solution using PCM-TD-B3LYP/6-311++G (d, p) approach. The calculated results matched well with the experimental values. Temperature dependence of thermodynamic parameters in the range of 100-1000 K were determined. The bond orbital occupancies, contribution from parent natural bond orbital (NBO), the natural atomic hybrids was discussed.