Isolation and structural characterization of acrylamide-pyridoxamine adducts

Pyridoxamine (PM) is an effective inhibitor of the formation of the carcinogen acrylamide (AA) from its precursors in low-moisture model systems. Although AA is widely assumed to act by scavenging carbonyl compounds, no alternative pathways have to date been explored. In this work, we found AA to directly react with PM in a low-moisture acrylamide-pyridoxamine model system heated at 140 °C for up to 40 min. The reaction products gave four major chromatographic peaks that were assigned to acrylamide-pyridoxamine adducts. Two of the adducts (AA-PM-1 and AA-PM-3) were selected for isolation and structural characterization with various spectroscopic (UV, fluorescence, IR, and NMR) and mass spectrometric techniques (MS, MS/MS). As shown by the proposed reaction scheme, PM can directly react with AA via Michael addition. The reaction involves a nucleophilic attack of the PM amine group on AA (an α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compound) to give adduct AA-PM-3, which was identified as 3-(((3-hydroxy-5-(hydroxymethyl)-2-methylpyridin-4-yl)methyl)amino)propanamide. However, AA-PM-3 further reacts with any additional AA present in the medium to give adduct AA-PM-1 identified as 3,3'-(((3-hydroxy-5-(hydroxymethyl)-2-methylpyridin-4-yl)methyl)azanediyl)dipropanamide. The time courses of these adduct formation reactions were studied in cookies supplemented with PM, where AA-PM-3 was found to be the predominant structure.