Sulphonamide and sulphonyl-hydrazone cyclic imide derivatives: Antinociceptive activity, molecular modeling and In Silico ADMET screening

In this paper, we describe the antinociceptive activity, molecular modeling and in silico ADMET screening of a series of sulphonyl-hydrazone and sulphonamide imidobenzene derivatives. Among these compounds, the sulphonyl-hydrazones 9 and 11 showed the most potent analgesic activity (ID 50 = 5.1 and 6.8 μmol/kg, respectively). Interestingly, all derivatives evaluated in this study have a better analgesic profile than the control drugs, acetyl salicylic acid and acetaminophen. Derivative 9 was the most promising compound; with a level of activity that was 24 times higher than the control drugs. Our SAR study showed a relationship among the distribution of the frontier orbital HOMO coefficients, HOMO-LUMO energy gap of these molecules and their reactivity. The best analgesic compounds (including 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12 ) fulfilled the Lipinski “rule-of-five”, which is theoretically important for good drug absorption and permeation.