The current study begins by optimizing the deucravacitinib
molecule
in the gas phase at the ωB97XD/cc-pVDZ level of theory using
density functional theory and proceeds to study its intramolecular
interactions. Further, a molecule of EtOH was introduced at different
locations on the deucravacitinib molecule, and the noncovalent interactions
arising from them were also investigated using several computational
tools. In this way, eight deucravacitinib–EtOH systems (1–8) were identified and their electronic environment
was studied after evaluating their binding energy. Using natural bond
orbital analysis, the localization of charges between the donor and
acceptor fragments in these interacting systems was examined. The
nature of interactions was analyzed using the reduced gradient approach
(NCI analysis), and few hydrogen bonding interactions (intermolecular
and intramolecular) were found in each system. The strength of these
hydrogen bonding interactions was further investigated by using theoretical
tools such as atoms in molecules analysis and independent gradient
model based on Hirshfeld partition analysis. The binding energy of
deucravacitinib with EtOH was decomposed into energy components based
on the domain-based local pair natural orbital coupled cluster technique
using LED analysis. The results from the hydrogen bonding interaction
analysis using different computational tools were found to be consistent
with the calculated order of binding energy of systems 1–8 and they also pointed toward the higher stability of system 3.