New2-((2-(2,4-dinitrophenyl)hydrazineeylidene) derivatives: design, synthesis, in silico, and in vitro anticancer studies.

A series of novel hydrazone compounds have been synthesized by the condensation of hydrazines and different substituted salicylaldehydes at a molar ratio of 1:1 in one step reaction and characterized by FT-IR, ESI-MS, 1H NMR, and single crystal x-ray diffraction. The crystal structure of the compound shows a trans configuration around the C = N bond and triclinic system with P -1/-p 1. Synthesized compounds were screened for cytotoxicity activities against A375 (melanoma), HT-29 (Colon), and A549 (lung) cancer cell lines. Among them, compound 2 exhibited the highest cytotoxic effect against the A375 cell line (IC50 = 0.30 µM) and HT-29 cell line (1.68 µM), compared to those of apatinib as a reference standard drug (0.28, 1.49 µM, respectively). The cytocompatibility assay on the L929 normal cell line and the hemolysis assay on human RBC were used to validate the non-toxic action. From DFT calculation, the various parameters such as HOMO-LUMO energies, Hirshfeld, and MEP have been studied. Furthermore, in silico molecular docking with three receptors was studied. Among four compounds, compound 2 has the lowest binding energy against cyclin dependent kinase (ΔGb = -9.3 kcal/mol). In addition to this, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation was also performed. Based on this study, these novel hydrazones can be considered a promising anticancer agent due to their potent cytotoxicity activities and computational analysis.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

A comprehensive study on the photophysical and non-linear optical properties of thienyl-chalcone derivatives.

The impact of the substitutional position of the chorine atom on the non-linear optical (NLO) response of chalcone derivatives is reported in this paper. Two thienyl-chalcone derivatives, (E)-3-(2,4-dichloro-phenyl)-1-(2,5-dichlorothiophen-3-yl)prop-2-en-1-one (3A25D2) and (E)-3-(2,6-dichloro-phenyl)-1-(2,5-dichlorothiophen-3-yl)prop-2-en-1-one (3A25D4), are synthesized, and their crystal structures were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. The photophysical and third-order NLO properties of 3A25D2 and 3A25D4 were investigated experimentally and computationally. The third-order NLO properties of 3A25D2 and 3A25D4 dissolved in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) were studied using Z-scan technique with 800 nm, 70 femtosecond (fs) pulses, and 532 nm continuous wave (CW) laser excitation. Closed aperture data recorded with fs pulses revealed positive non-linearity of both the compounds, while a strong negative non-linearity was observed in the CW regime. Open aperture data revealed that both the compounds exhibit positive non-linear absorption in fs pulsed and CW domains. Several wave function analysis methods, such as the inter-fragment charge transfer (IFCT) analysis, hole-electron analysis, (hyper)polarizability density analysis, and decomposition of the (hyper)polarizability contribution by numerical integration, were carried out to study the optical properties and charge transfer mechanism. In addition, the influence of the medium (liquid and crystalline) and external field wavelength on the optical properties of the two molecules were analyzed. Thermal and electronic contributions toward NLO properties were studied experimentally. The theoretically calculated cubic hyperpolarizability γ(-ω; ω, ω, -ω) in liquid for 3A25D2 and 3A25D4 were 4.69 × 10-34 and 2.68 × 10-34 esu, whereas the corresponding femtosecond regime Z-scan results gave 4.35 × 10-34 and 3.78 × 10-34 esu, respectively.