Synthesis, spectroscopic, DFT calculations, biological activity, SAR, and molecular docking studies of novel bioactive pyridine derivatives

Enaminonitrile pyridine derivative was used as a precursor for preparation of fourteen heterocyclic compounds using both conventional thermal and microwave techniques. Diverse organic reagents, such as chloroacetyl chloride, acetic anhydride, chloroacetic acid, carbon disulfide, p-toluene sulfonyl chloride, maleic anhydride, phthalic anhydride, were used. The chemical formulae and structures of isolated derivatives were obtained using different analytical and spectroscopic techniques such as IR, 1H-, 13C-NMR as well as mass spectrometry. The spectroscopic analyses revealed diverse structure arrangements for the products. Molecular structure optimization of certain compounds were performed by the density functional theory (DFT/B3LYP) method and the basis set 6–31 G with double zeta plus polarization (d,p). The antimicrobial inhibition and the antioxidant activity of the reported compounds were screened. Compounds 5, 6, 11 and 13 exhibited the highest antibacterial inhibition, while compound 8 gave the highest scavenging activity (IC50 43.39 µg/ml) against the DPPH radical. Structure–activity relationship of the reported compounds were correlated with the data of antibacterial and the antioxidant activity. The global reactivity descriptors were also correlated with the biological properties of compounds. The molecular docking studies of reported compounds were investigated, and the analysis showed that the docked compounds have highly negative values for the functional binding scores. The binding interaction was found to be correlated with the substituent fragments of the compounds.