An analysis of the interactions between folic acid and aromatic guest molecules

The formation of complexes between folate and therapeutic drug molecules is well known. In this work, we attempted to elucidate the role of the aromatic rings of folate and drug molecules in interactions between both of these molecules. A detailed molecular simulation study was carried out to explore the associative behavior of folic acid with phenylalanine and tyrosine, which show fluorescence emission following the excitation of these molecules at 257 nm and 274 nm, respectively. Therefore, studies of fluorescence emission from phenylalanine and tyrosine were performed in this work. The results of these studies indicated that folic acid associates with phenylalanine and tyrosine with binding constants ranging from 1.46 × 10⁴ to 2.66 × 10⁴ M^-1. X-ray diffraction studies suggested that folic acid self-assembly is maintained in the presence of associative interactions of the folic acid with guest molecules. These results demonstrate that the aromatic rings in the structures of the folic acid and the therapeutic drug play an important role in the encapsulation of guest molecules through folate self-assembly.