Investigations on the interactions of 5-fluorouracil with bovine serum albumin: Optical spectroscopic and molecular modeling studies

5-Fluorouracil is clinically used as antitumor drug to treat many types of cancer, which is made available to the target tissues in conjugation with transport protein serum albumin. 5-Fluorouracil which is low toxic when compared to the other drugs of this family and hence its binding characteristics are therefore of prime interest. The steady state and time resolved fluorescence studies, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and circular dichroism studies were employed to explain the mode and the mechanism of interaction of 5FU with BSA. 5-Fluorouracil binding is characterized with one high affinity binding site, with the binding constant of the order of 104. The molecular distance r (~1.5 nm) between donor (bovine serum abumin) and acceptor (5-fluorouracil) was estimated according to Forster׳s theory of non-radiative energy transfer. The feature of 5-fluorouracil induced structural changes of bovine serum albumin has been studied in detail by circular dichroism and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis. The binding dynamics was expounded by synchronous fluorescence spectroscopy, florescence lifetime measurements and molecular modeling elicits that hydrophobic interactions and hydrogen bonding, stabilizes the 5-fluorouracil interaction with BSA.