Exploration and evaluation of bioactive phytocompounds against BRCA proteins by in silico approach

Abstract

The proteins encoded by the two major breast cancer genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2), ensure the stability of DNA and prevent uncontrolled cell growth; mutation of these genes is linked to the development of hereditary breast cancers. Exploration of human breast cancer inhibitors plays a vital role in the drug discovery process. In the current work, in silico studies were performed which involves a computational approach for the identification of active phytocompounds from the diverse set of medicinal plant products against the BRCA receptor. The in silico study through pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics properties shown promising outcomes for these phytocompounds data set as breast cancer inhibitors. It was observed that the compounds conformed to the Lipinski’s rule of five and had good bioavailability. The drug-likeness model score and ADMET profile of the designed ligands also established their potential as a drug candidate. The docking study provided useful insights on potential target-lead interactions and indicated that the newly designed leads had a good binding affinity for BRCA targets. A pharmacophore model was built to explore the scaffolds for BRCA inhibitory activity. An effort is made to screen an inhibitor against BRCA targets by combining the use of ADMET, docking score, and pharmacophore model.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• Phytocompounds
• docking
• drug-likeness
• in silico
• BRCA
• anti-breast cancer
• ADMET

Acknowledgements

Inputs from Dr. Suresh Kumar R, Senior Research Scientist at Syngene International Limited in preparing this manuscript and corrections is highly acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).