Design of ionic liquids containing glucose and choline as drug carriers, finding the link between QM and MD studies

Abstract

Designing drug delivery systems for therapeutic compounds whose receptors are located in the cytosol of cells is challenging as a bilayer cell membrane is negatively charged. The newly designed drug delivery systems should assist the mentioned drugs in passing the membrane barriers and achieving their targets. This study concentrated on developing novel ionic liquids (ILs) that interact effectively with cell membranes. These ILs are based on glucose-containing choline and are expected to be non-toxic. The binding energies of the known pharmaceutically active ionic liquids were calculated at the B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) level in the gas phase and compared with those of our newly designed carbohydrate-based ionic liquids. Subsequently, we employed MD simulations to obtain information about the interactions of these known and designed ILs with the cell membrane. In our approach, we adopted QM and MD studies and illustrated that there could be a link between the QM and MD results.

A New 2-Aminospiropyrazolylammonium Cation with Possible Uses in the Topical Areas of Ionic Liquids

“…A recent study concentrated on developing novel ILs based on glucose-containing choline, which interacts effectively with the cell membranes. ILs are expected to be non-toxic [94].…”

Solvation of Model Biomolecules in Choline-Aminoate Ionic Liquids: A Computational Simulation Using Polarizable Force Fields

“…Despite a notable experimental effort in providing data about the compatibility of ILs with biological matter, biopolymers, and biomolecules in general, refs. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] the fundamental (i.e., molecular) mechanisms by which the IL interacts with biomolecules is not yet entirely understood (see for example [30] and references therein). This is due to an intrinsic difficulty in measuring the relevant molecular observable in complex systems [31][32][33] where disentangling the interactions of biomolecules (which are inherently complex chemical systems) and solvent ILs is often unpractical.…”

“…This is due to an intrinsic difficulty in measuring the relevant molecular observable in complex systems [31][32][33] where disentangling the interactions of biomolecules (which are inherently complex chemical systems) and solvent ILs is often unpractical. Furthermore, molecular simulations of biomolecules in ILs are time-consuming, system specific, and often suffer from technical difficulties due to the availability of suitable and reliable force fields [30,34,35]. Despite these problems, several attempts have already been made focusing on imidazolium-based ILs [36][37][38][39][40].…”