Sodium malonate salts prevent fullerene self-assembly. Molecular Dynamics Study

Miguel Ángel Balderas Altamirano¹, Gustavo Basurto-Islas¹, Melchor Martínez-Herrera², Susana Figueroa-Gerstenmaier¹

¹ Departamento de Ingeniería Química, Electrónica y Biomédica, División de Ciencias e Ingenierías, Universidad de Guanajuato, Campus León, León, Guanajuato, México. 37150.

² Departamento de Ciencias Naturales e Ingeniería, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Cuajimalpa, Cd. de México, México. 05348.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder. AD patients develop neurofibrillary pathology such as amyloid-b (Ab) plaques. In AD there is an overexpression of Ab that produce its polymerization, and eventually the formation of plaques, cognitive impairment and neuronal death. In our research group, we have previously shown that diethyl fullerenemalonates and the corresponding sodium salts, adducts of C₆₀ bearing 1 to 3 diethyl malonyl and disodium malonyl substituents inhibit Ab aggregation (Melchor et al., 2018). Fullerene is a hydrophobic molecule that requires solubility to reach the molecular target in AD patients. In this study, to measure and understand the solubility of these fullerene adducts. We show a general analysis of Molecular Dynamics trajectories for the fullerene adducts compounds of ethyl malonate and disodium malonates. Each adduct is functionalized with 1 to 6 ethyl or sodium malonates in the fullerene surface. Our analysis included the number of hydrogen bonds, the Surface Accessible Solvent (SAS) and the radial distribution function. We found that the fullerene ethyl malonate showed self-aggregation because of weak interactions with water. On contrary, the six different fullerene sodium malonates, demonstrated high solubility in all cases.

References

Martínez-Herrera, Melchor; Figueroa-Gerstenmaier, Susana; García-Sierra Francisco; Beltrán, Hiram I; Rivera-Fernández, Norma; Lerma-Romero, Jorge A.; López-Camacho, Perla Y.; Basurto-Islas Gustavo, “Fullerenemalonates inhibit amyloid beta aggregation, in vitro and in silico evaluation”, RSC Adv., 2018, 8, 39667