Crystal structure of (3E)-5-nitro-3-(2-phenyl­hydrazinyl­idene)-1H-indol-2(3H)-one

The reaction between 5-nitro-isatin and phenyl-hydrazine in acidic ethanol yields the title compound, C14H10N4O3, whose mol-ecular structure deviates slightly from a planar geometry (r.m.s. deviation = 0.065 Å for the mean plane through all non-H atoms). An intra-molecular N-H⋯O hydrogen bond is present, forming a ring of graph-set motif S(6). In the crystal, mol-ecules are linked by N-H⋯O and C-H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter-actions into a two-dimensional network along (120), and rings of graph-set motif R22(8), R22(26) and R44(32) are observed. Additionally, a Hirshfeld surface analysis suggests that the mol-ecules are stacked along [100] through C=O⋯Cg inter-actions and indicates that the most important contributions for the crystal structure are O⋯H (28.5%) and H⋯H (26.7%) inter-actions. An in silico evaluation of the title compound with the DHFR enzyme (di-hydro-folate reductase) was performed. The isatin-hydrazone derivative and the active site of the selected enzyme show N-H⋯O(ASP29), N-H⋯O(ILE96) and Cg⋯Cg(PHE33) inter-actions.