QSAR based docking studies of marine algal anticancer compounds as inhibitors of protein kinase B (PKBβ)

Marine algae are prolific source of bioactive secondary metabolites and are found to be active against different cancer cell lines. QSAR studies will explicate the significance of a particular class of descriptor in eliciting anticancer activity against a cancer type. Marine algal compounds showing anticancer activity against six different cancer cell lines namely MCF-7, A431, HeLa, HT-29, P388 and A549 taken from Seaweed metabolite database were subjected to comprehensive QSAR modeling studies. A hybrid-GA (genetic algorithm) optimization technique for descriptor space reduction and multiple linear regression analysis (MLR) approach was used as fitness functions. Cell lines HeLa and MCF-7 showed good statistical quality (R2 ∼ 0.75, Q2 ∼ 0.65) followed by A431, HT29 and P388 cell lines with reasonable statistical values (R2 ∼ 0.70, Q2 ∼ 0.60). The models developed were interpretable, with good statistical and predictive significance. Molecular descriptor analyses revealed that Baumann's alignment-independent topological descriptors had a major role in variation of activity along with other descriptors. Incidentally, earlier QSAR analysis on a variety of chemically diverse PKBα inhibitors revealed Baumann's alignment-independent topological descriptors that differentiated the molecules binding to Protein kinase B (PKBα) kinase or PH domain, hence a docking study of two crystal structures of PKBβ was performed for identification of novel ATP-competitive inhibitors of PKBβ. Five compounds had a good docking score and Callophycin A showed better ligand efficiency than other PKBβ inhibitors. Furthermore in silico pharmacokinetic and toxicity studies also showed that Callophycin A had a high drug score (0.85) compared to the other inhibitors. These results encourages discovering novel inhibitors for cancer therapeutic targets by screening metabolites from marine algae.

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