In the present study, we herein report a DDQ-catalyzed
new protocol
for the synthesis of substituted 3-acylindoles. Being a potential
system for virtual hydrogen storage, introduction of catalytic DDQ
in combination with Fe(NO3)3·9H2O and molecular oxygen as co-catalysts offers a regioselective oxo-functionalization
of C-3 alkyl-/aryllidine indolines even with scale-up investigations.
Intermediate isolation, their spectroscopic characterization, and
the density functional theory calculations indicate that the method
involves dehydrogenative allylic hydroxylation and 1,3-functional
group isomerization/aromatization followed by terminal oxidation to
afford 3-acylindoles quantitatively with very high regioselectivity.
This method is very general for a large number of substrates with
varieties of functional groups tolerance emerging high-yield outcome.
Moreover, molecular docking studies were performed for some selected
ligands with an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase complex (RdRp complex)
of SARS-CoV-2 to illustrate the binding potential of those ligands.
The docking results revealed that few of the ligands possess the potential
to inhibit the RdRp of SARS-Cov-2 with binding energies (−6.7
to −8.19 kcal/mol), which are comparably higher with respect
to the reported binding energies of the conventional re-purposed drugs
such as Remdesivir, Ribavirin, and so forth (−4 to −7
kcal/mol).