In vitro and in silico studies of the interaction of three tetrazoloquinazoline derivatives with DNA and BSA and their cytotoxicity activities against MCF-7, HT-29 and DPSC cell lines

In this study, the interaction of three [1,2,3,4]tetrazolo[5,1-b]-quinazolin-8-one derivatives with salmon sperm DNA and BSA was investigated experimentally and theoretically. Fluorescence and absorption spectroscopy techniques were applied to determine the probable interaction mechanism and correlated binding constants and thermodynamic parameters. It was found that the compounds intercalate into the DNA duplex via minor groove in a moderately strong fashion with the binding constants of 104 M−1. The values of binding constant for the interaction with BSA at different temperatures were also calculated to be in the range of 1.06 × 103-3.54 × 108 M−1 indicating the relatively high propensity of the compounds to BSA. In vitro cytotoxicity studies on the effect of the compounds on MCF-7 and HT-29 cancerous cell lines as well as DPSC normal cell line were performed using MTT assay. It was observed that the compounds exhibited selective inhibitory effect against cancer cell growth. Moreover, each of the title compounds was separately docked to DNA and BSA using Autodock Vina as a molecular docking program. The obtained theoretical results were in good agreement with those obtained from Experimental studies.