Non-covalent interactions in the self-assembly of dihydropyridone supermolecules and in vitro anti-cancer assessment in human lung adenocarcinoma cell line (A549)

The synthesis of dihydropyridone derivatives has been reported by ring rearrangement of pyrans using iodine and formic acid as a catalyst separately. Dihydropyridones were crystallized subjected for single-crystal X-ray crystallography to acquire their structural parameters. The different non-covalent interactions involved within the supermolecular systems were studied and validated using Hirshfeld surface plot analysis. N-H···O interactions between the lactam group dominate. Still, other non-covalent interactions such as C-H···N, C-H···O, C-H···C, N-H···N, C-H···π, and lone pair···π systems act as the driving force in facilitating the self-assembly of the dihydropyridone supermolecules. The synthesized compounds were analyzed by in vitro techniques using human lung adenocarcinoma (A549) to evaluate their cytotoxic activities. Ethyl 4-(4-chlorophenyl)-5-cyano-2-methyl-6-oxo-1,4,5,6- tetrahydropyridine-3-carboxylate has shown the highest cytotoxicity among all the synthesized compounds. Molecular recognition properties of the dihydropyridone compounds were also studied, employing molecular docking tools to gain insight into the binding mode inside the allosteric binding pocket of the Eg5 protein through non-covalent interactions.