Designing a Promotor for a Novel Target Site Identified in Caspases for Initiating Apoptosis in Cancer Cells

Abstract

Caspases are enzymes that can cleave other proteins and control normal and abnormal cell death. Cancer cells generally lack apoptosis. In this research work, a computational approach has been adopted to design a promotor that targets the inactivated caspases particularly Pro-caspase-3 or caspase-7, which are the effector caspases that cleave the downstream substrates like lamin-A, ICAD and PARP. Out of the 38 anti-carcinomic compounds selected for the analysis, some of them are found to have positive charged substituents similar to the known drug; PAC1, which cleaves the safety catch mode that blocks the IETD active site. Site specific interactions of the proteins with these ligands were performed. From the interaction analysis, it was found that 3 compounds; Choline, Glaziovine, Dasatinib can effectively target caspases and activate them. It has been suggested that these compounds favor the activation of the effector caspase proteins, thereby giving a better option in cancer therapy. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.