Simulation of the solid state and the first and second hydration shell of the xanthine oxidase inhibitor allopurinol: Structures obtained using DFT and MP2 methods

Summary

Allopurinol (AL) was investigated in the isolated state, solid state, and in the hydrated form through an exhaustive quantum-chemical analysis. Full geometry optimization and energy calculations of the 11 most stable tautomers in the isolated state were performed. The most stable one corresponds to AL-15 at all the levels of computation. Several weak bands of the experimental spectrum in Ar-matrix were tentatively assigned to tautomer AL-25. The crystal unit cell of the solid state was simulated by a heptamer form. Comparisons with the experimental values confirm that only tautomer AL-15 appears in the solid state. The hydration of the two most stable tautomers: AL-15 and AL-25 was carried out. Solvent effects were considered using the Tomasi's polarized continuum model (PCM) and by the explicit model (EM) including a variable number of water molecules surrounding the base to simulate the first and second hydration shells. In this second hydration shell the calculated difference in the free energy between both tautomers is so small, that both tautomers can coexist in bull water. Some of the most important conclusions on the effects of the hydration on the molecular structure were presented. The deformation and interaction energies were corrected for basis set superposition error (BSSE) using the counterpoise (CP) procedure.