Molecular modeling and multispectroscopic studies of the interaction of hepatitis B drug, adefovir dipivoxil with human serum albumin

The interaction of hepatitis B drug, adefovir dipivoxil with human serum albumin (HSA) was studied by using UV-vis, fluorometric, circular dichroism (CD) and molecular docking techniques. The results indicated that the binding of the drug to HSA caused fluorescence quenching through static quenching mechanism with binding constant of 1.3×103 M−1. The thermodynamic parameters indicated that the hydrophobic force contacts are the major forces in the stability of protein-drug complex (ΔH>0 and ΔS>0). The displacement experiments using the site probes viz., warfarin and ibuprofen showed that adefovir dipivoxil could bind to the site III of HSA. The results of CD and UV-vis spectroscopy indicated that the binding of the drug induced some conformational changes in HSA. Furthermore, the study of molecular docking also confirmed binding of adefovir dipivoxil to the site III of HSA by hydrophobic interaction.