Synthesis, spectral investigation, biological activities and docking stimulation of novel metal complexes of Trifluoro phenylthiazol derivative with computational studies

Abstract

In this investigation, we prepared the new ligand (HL) of 1,1,1-trifluoro-4-((4-phenylthiazol-2-yl)imino)pent-2-en-2-ol(3), which was obtained from the condensation of 1,1,1-trifluoroacetylacetone(1) with 2-amino-4-Phenylthiazole(2). HL ligand was then reacted with the nitrate salts of Cr(III), Fe(III), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II), and Zn(II) to afford the novel metal complexes. The chemical structures were validated through elemental analysis, UV-Visible, IR, ESR, 1H NMR, mass spectra, TGA, magnetic, and molar conductance measurements. The enolic oxygen and azomethine nitrogen were involved in the bidentate binding of the HL ligand and the theoretical studies, utilizing DFT/LANL2DZ, confirmed the binding modes and the stability of the complexes. The thermal stability of all complexes was determined using TGA analysis, and the kinetic parameters were obtained using the Coats-Redfern method. Additionally, the synthesized HL and its metal complexes exhibited antimicrobial activities against Gram-positive, Gram-negative, and fungi strains. These findings were confirmed using molecular docking with a variety of proteins such as PDBID: 3t88, PDBID: 1tgh, PDBID: 2wje and PDBID: 4ynt with least binding energy and different bond lengths. In addition, the synthesized complexes showed excellent in vitro-antitumor activities contra human colon cancer cells HCT-116 which is comparable to the African green monkey kidney's normal cells and showed the selectivity index (S.I.) of Cu(II) and Zn(II) complexes was determined to be 62.46 and 66.70; respectively, indicating superior activity of these complexes compared to methotrexate as a reference compound with a value of S.I. = 20.64., and also this result was confirmed the stability of the complex with PDBID: 2x7fand PDBID: 3x0G through molecular docking studies. Moreover, HL and all metal complexes showed stability when optimized through the DFT/LANL2DZ basis set and also their physical descriptors and HOMO-LUMO, MEP and ESP were determined.