Bioactive compounds from Pandanous fascicularis as potential therapeutic candidate to tackle hepatitis a inhibition: Docking and molecular dynamics simulation study

Abstract

Due to extensive pharmacological research, medicinal plants the underpinning of indigenous herbal serve as a possible source of key compounds for the development of new drugs. Hepatitis A, one of the most widespread infectious diseases associated with global public health issues. The transmission of hepatitis A virus (HAV) occurs, through personal contact, as well as contaminated food/water. The HAV 3C cysteine protease is a non-structural protein, plays pivotal role in proliferation and viral replication. Significant phytochemicals of Pandanous fascicularis include phytosterol, kobusin, epipinoresinol, and ceroptene, which have a wide variety of biological functions. Through ADMET investigation, we have screened fifteen phytochemicals for this study. Additionally, using molecular docking, these phytochemicals were docked with the HAV 3C protease which signifies the phytochemicals phytosterol, kobusin, epipinoresinol, and ceroptene have a significant capability to bind with hepatitis A virus protein.The docking study was further accompanied by analyzes RMSD, RMSF, Rg, SASA, H-bond number, and principal component analysis through 100 ns MD simulations. The molecular dynamics study reveals that, all four phytochemicals possess considerable binding efficacy with hepatitis A virus protein. Based on our computational study and MMGBSA calculations, phytosterol, kobusin and epipinoresinol phytochemicals may be a potential drug candidate for inhibition of hepatitis A. The potential therapeutic characteristics of the phytochemicals against hepatitis A inhibition offer additional support for the in vitro and in vivo studies in future.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

KEYWORD:

• Hepatitis A
• Pandanous fascicularis
• phytochemical
• binding affinity
• MD simulation

Acknowledgements

The authors grateful to the Director, National Institute of Technology Raipur, India for providing laboratory facility. The authors also thank the WEBGRO Macromolecular Simulations facility of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences for providing the supercomputing facility for performing molecular dynamics simulation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.