Virtual screening of natural compounds as combinatorial agents from indian medicinal plants against estrogen positive breast cancer

Abstract

Facing worldwide challenges associated with multifactorial etiology of breast cancer, designing of combinatorial therapies using natural compounds is currently the emergent way of treating several cancers including breast cancer in a synergistic way, which may mitigate several problems associated with multiple receptor targeting. In this research, Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer was taken as prototype and several key receptors associated with this particular disease were targeted by virtual screening of natural compounds found in Indian originated medicinal plants using Computer aided Drug Designing (CADD) strategies. We found the combination of Carpusin, Paulownin Cornigerine, Nororientaline, Oryzalexin B, Romucosine H and Colchicine as effective against six potential receptors i.e. FGFR2, ESR1, PIK3CA, PIK3CB, PIK3CD and AR in Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer with their binding energies in the range of ∆G ≤ -8.0 Kcal/mol as well as significant number of common amino acid binding residues as compared with binding sites of receptors. Thus this research holds significant implications for the designing of combinatorial therapeutic agents against breast cancer which can be further tested in-vitro and in-vivo to prove their synergistic efficiency.