Photodegradation of 2-chloro substituted phenothiazines in alcohols

The mechanisms that trigger the phototoxic response to 2-chlorophenothiazine derivatives are still unknown. To better understand the relationship between the molecular structure of halogenated phenothiazines and their phototoxic activity, their photophysics and photochemistry were studied in several alcohols. The photodestruction quantum yields were determined under anaerobic conditions using monochromatic light (313 nm). Absorption- and emission-spectroscopy, ¹H- and ¹³C-NMR and GC-MS were used to characterize the photoproducts and reference compounds. An electron transfer mechanism had been previously proposed by Bunce et al . ( J. Med. Chem . 22 , 202–204) to explain the large difference between the photodestruction quantum yield of 2-chlorpromazine (φ = 0.46) and 2-chlorphenothiazine (φ = 0.20). According to these authors, the alkylamino chain transfers an electron to the phenothiazine moiety. Our results demonstrate that this mechanism is incorrect, because the photodestruction quantum yields of all chlorinated derivatives of this study are the same under the same conditions of solvent and irradiation wavelength. The quantum yield has no dependence on the 10-substituent, but it depends on the solvent. The percentage of each photoproduct, on the other hand, strongly depends on that substituent, but not very much on the solvent. Finally, it is demonstrated that the phototoxic effect of chlorinated phenothiazines is not related to the photodechlorination, although both processes share the same transient.