Synthesis, structure and toxicity evaluation of ethanolamine nitro/chloronitrobenzoates: a combined experimental and theoretical study

Background Nitroaromatic and chloronitroaromatic compounds have been a subject of great interest in industry and recently in medical-pharmaceutic field. 2-Chloro-4-nitro/2-chloro-5-nitrobenzoic acids and 4-nitrobenzoic acid are promising new agents for the treatment of main infectious killing diseases in the world: immunodeficiency diseases and tuberculosis. Results New ethanolamine nitro/chloronitrobenzoates were synthesized and characterized by X-ray crystallography, UV–vis, FT-IR and elementary analysis techniques. The toxicity of the compounds prepared and correspondent components was evaluated using Hydractinia echinata as test system. A significant lower toxicity was observed for nitro-derivative compared with chloronitro-derivatives and individual components. Crystallographic studies, together with the chemical reactivity and stability profiles resulted from density functional theory and ab initio molecular orbital calculations, explain the particular behavior of ethanolamine 4-nitrobenzoate in biological test. Conclusions The experimental and theoretical data reveal the potential of these compounds to contribute to the design of new active pharmaceutical ingredients with lower toxicity. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13065-017-0346-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.