Phytochemical Characterization of <i>Pterocephalus frutescens</i> with In-Silico Evaluation as Chemotherapeutic Medicine and Oral Pharmacokinetics Prediction Study

oleh: Atef A. El-Hela, Marwa S. Abu Bakr, Mostafa M. Hegazy, Mohammed A. Dahab, Ayman Abo Elmaaty, Adel Ehab Ibrahim, Sami El Deeb, Hatem S. Abbass

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2023-01-01

Deskripsi

Virtual screening of the potential lead chemotherapeutic phytochemicals from medicinal plants has useful application in the field of in-silico modelling and computer-based drug design by orienting and scoring ligands in the active binding site of a target protein. The phytochemical investigation of the <i>Pterocephalus frutescens</i> extract in n-butanol resulted in the isolation and structure elucidation of three iridoids and four flavonoids which were identified as Geniposide (<b>1</b>), Geniposidic acid (<b>2</b>), Nepetanudoside C (<b>3</b>), Isovitexin (<b>4</b>), Luteolin-7-O-glucoside (<b>5</b>) Isoorientin (<b>6</b>) and Orientin (<b>7</b>), respectively. Molecular docking studies were used to compare the binding energies of the isolated phytochemicals at four biological cancer-relevant targets; namely, aromatase, carbonic anhydrase IX, fatty acid synthase, and topoisomerase II-DNA complex. The docking study concluded that the isolated compounds have promising cytotoxic activities, in particular, Luteolin-7-O-glucoside (<b>5</b>) and Orientin (<b>7</b>) which exhibited high binding affinities among the isolated compounds at the active sites of the target enzymes; Aromatase (−8.73 Kcal/mol), and Carbonic anhydrase IX (−8.92 Kcal/mol), respectively, surpassing the corresponding binding scores of the co-crystallized ligands and the reference drugs at these target enzymes. Additionally, among the isolated compounds, Luteolin-7-O-glucoside (<b>5</b>) showed the most outstanding binding affinities at the active sites of the target enzymes; Fatty acid synthase, and Topisomerase II-DNA complex with binding scores of −6.82, and −7.99 Kcal/mol, respectively. Finally, the SwissADME online web tool predicted that most of these compounds possessed acceptable oral bioavailability and drug likeness characteristics.