Computer-based approaches for determining the pharmacological profile of 5-(3-nitro-arylidene)-thiazolidine-2,4-dione

The development of novel and safe compounds is a challenging task in the drug discovery trajectory. Accordingly, the individuation of promising core molecules with biological activities could pave the way to develop effective drugs to treat a given disease. The use of a computational approach can reduce the time for identifying promising core molecules characterizing their potential pharmacological profile and providing hints for the synthesis of novel derivatives with increased predicted pharmacological activity. Following this strategy, starting from a core molecule thiazolidine-2,4-dione, the derivative of 5-(3-nitro-arylidene)-thiazolidine-2,4-dione was synthesized to investigate the biological and pharmacological potential. An extensive computational investigation was performed employing ab initio calculations by using Density Functional Theory (DFT), and subsequent in silico studies were accomplished by molecular docking calculation. The structures 5-(3-nitro-arylidene)-thiazolidine-2,4-dione were fully optimized using multiparametric DFT methods were calculated at the B3LYP/6-31+G (d, p) level basis set. Besides gaining insights into the potential pharmacological profile of the selected derivative, molecular docking against some selected drug targets, ADME, and PASS prediction were performed. According to charges and molecular electrostatic potential (MESP) calculation, the N-H region could offer promising active site interactions for protein binding. Furthermore, Homo-Lumo and global reactivity values indicate a good profile for the selected compound, and UV-Vis provides further insights about its properties, potentially helpful for further experimental analysis. Notably, the in silico investigation indicated that EGFR and ORF2 enzymes could represent the selected drug-like compound's possible targets. Conclusively, the proposed computational approach demonstrated that it is possible to evaluate a proposed compound's bioactivity profile. We characterized 5-(3-nitro-arylidene)-thiazolidine-2,4-dione derivative, suggesting it as a good starting point for developing interesting hit compounds with a relevant pharmacological profile.