Atom accurate structure determination of alprazolam/cyclodextrin inclusion complexes by ROESY and computational approaches

A lot of interest has been seen in computational methods that provide reliable atom accurate structures of different molecular systems. In this article, we describe the complexation of alprazolam (ALP) with three cyclodextrins, i.e., α-, β- and γ-CD. ROESY spectra showed that no complex was formed between ALP and α-CD however, ring A of ALP formed ICs with β- and γ-CD. Therefore, structures of ALP/β-CD and ALP/γ-CD were obtained by a combination of NMR (2D-ROESY) and computational methods by a quantitative ROESY approach. Here we determined the structures of CD ICs by a method recently used in our laboratory and then the structures were obtained independently by DFT (B3LYP functional and def2-TZVP basis set). The structures obtained by both methods were compared with each other. Results demonstrated that our method provides reasonable structures comparable to DFT, and can be used to obtain highly atom accurate structures of CD inclusion complexes. Quantitative ROESY analysis of MM and MD structures consume less time and are cheap as compared to DFT, which is highly CPU demanding and time taking. Negative values of binding energy showed that the process of inclusion was spontaneous and complexes formed were stable. The large negative value of binding energy for ALP/β-CD as compared to ALP/γ-CD showed a higher binding affinity of ALP towards β-CD. FMO studies also revealed the higher HOMO-LOUMO gap for inclusion complexes as compared to pure ALP. Intermolecular H-bonds formed in both the complexes are also one of the forces responsible for inclusion complex formation.