Hydrogen bonding and stacking pi-pi interactions in solid 6-thioguanine and 6-mercaptopurine (antileukemia and antineoplastic drugs) studied by NMR-NQR double resonance spectroscopy and density functional theory.

A chemotherapeutic drug 6-thioguanine (2-amino-1,7-dihydro-6H-purine-6-thione, 6-TG) has been studied experimentally in the solid state by NMR-NQR double resonance and theoretically by the density functional theory. Fourteen resonance frequencies on (14)N have been detected and assigned to particular nitrogen sites in the 6-TG molecule. A valid assignment of NQR frequencies for 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP) has been proposed. The effects of molecular aggregations, related to intermolecular hydrogen bonding and stacking pi-pi interactions on the NQR parameters have been analyzed within the DFT and AIM (atoms in molecules) formalism for 6-TG and 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP). The so-called global reactivity descriptors have been calculated to compare the properties of molecules of 6-TG and 6-MP, to check the effect of -NH(2) group as well as to identify the differences in crystal packing.