Rational Design of Selenophene‐infused BODIPY Molecules as Fluorogenic Probes for Lung Tumor Imaging – A Computational Approach

Abstract

The BODIPY based molecules show promising properties towards bioimaging applications due to its structural flexibility and versatile optoelectronic characteristic features. Among many strategies in the development of such molecules, fusion of heterocyclic units into the BODIPY core structure is vital in tuning the π‐delocalization and spectral properties. Recently reported Thieno [3,2b] Thiophene based BODIPY (TTB) attracts a lot of attention while the caliber of their Selenophene derivatives are interesting and yet to be explored. Therefore, a systematic replacement of Sulphur by Selenium has been done on TTB and seven new selenophene fused TTB molecules are computationally designed and evaluated for their optoelectronic properties towards bioimaging of CDK2 kinase tumor cells. The optimized geometries indicate that all these molecules are showing excellent π‐delocalization and further stabilized by a range of intra‐molecular C−H−F and B−F−S/Se interactions. Molecular docking studies show that these TTB molecules are potential inhibitors and can be used for lung tumor imaging in biomedical applications. Molecular Dynamics analysis confirms their preferential binding inside the active site up to 100 ns. In summary, this study highlights the importance of Se replacement in designing new BODIPY‐based bioimaging candidates with excellent near‐IR luminescence and photo sensitizers for future biomedical applications.