Determining the Crystal Structures of Peptide Analogs of Boronic Acid in the Absence of Single Crystals: Intricate Motifs of Ixazomib Citrate Revealed by XRPD Guided by ss-NMR

Uncertainties in the structure determination of peptide analogs of boronic acid, exacerbated by the many coordination modes of boron, represent an obstacle in understanding their role in living organisms and thus also in developing the next generation of anticancer drugs. For that reason, we present here a general experimental computational strategy allowing structure determination of complex boronic acid derivatives with extensive conformational variability. We demonstrate successful solution of the crystal structures of two nonsolvated polymorphs of ixazomib citrate directly from synchrotron powder diffraction data, which is challenging because the two molecules in the asymmetric unit cell that exhibit 32 degrees of conformational freedom push the limits of current solution procedures. We used a novel two-step Rietveld refinement based on DFT-D restraints to improve information quality derived from powder diffraction data to be comparable with that of single crystal solutions. NMR crystallography was applied to verify the crystal structures, and the high potential value of using B-11 NMR parameters toward the solution of unknown structures was demonstrated. Evolution of B-11-B-11 double-quantum coherences allows probing of interatomic distances up to 7 angstrom. Overall, we present an integrated approach that applies several techniques in conjunction to provide otherwise unavailable structural information.