Photobehavior of the antipsychotic drug cyamemazine in a supramolecular gel protective environment

In this work, a molecular hydrogel made of gelator (S)-4-((3-methyl-1-(nonylamino)-1-oxobutan-2-yl)amino)-4-oxobutanoic acid (SVN) has been employed as soft container to modify the photochemical and photophysical behavior of the antipsychotic drug cyamemazine (CMZ). The interaction of CMZ with the gel network has been evidenced by fluorescence spectroscopy through a hypsochromic shift of the emission band (from λ_max = 521 nm in solution to λ_max = 511 nm in the gel) and an increase of the fluorescence lifetime (5.6 ns in PBS vs. 7.2 ns in the gel). In the laser flash photolysis experiments on CMZ/SVN systems, the CMZ triplet excited state (³CMZ*), monitored at λ = 320 nm, has been more efficiently generated and became much longer-lived than in solution (2.7 μs vs. 0.7 μs); besides, photochemical ionization leading to the radical cation CMZ^+• was disfavored. In the steady-state experiments, photooxidation of CMZ to afford the N,S-dioxide derivative CMZ-SONO has been retarded in the gel, which provides a more lipophilic and constrained microenvironment. Both the photophysical properties and the photoreactivity are in agreement with CMZ located in a less polar domain when entrapped in the supramolecular gel, as result of the interaction of the drug with the fibers of the supramolecular SVN gel.