Pharmacophore modeling, atom based 3D-QSAR and docking studies of Chalcone derivatives as tubulin inhibitors

Abstract

Tubulin is attractive target for anticancer drug design and their inhibitors are useful in treatment of various cancers. Pharmacophore and Atom based QSAR studies were carried out for series of Chalcone derivatives. Pharmacophore model was developed using 38 compounds, having pIC50 ranging 4.003 to 6.552. The best Pharmacophoric hypothesis AHHRR.10 (one H- Acceptor, two hydrophobic groups, two aromatic rings) had survival score of 4.824. Atom based 3D QSAR was built for the best hypothesis with training set of 31 and test set of 7 compounds using PLS factor. The obtained QSAR model has excellent regression coefficient of R 2 = 0.954, cross validated correlation coefficient q 2 = 0.681, Pearson-R = 0.886 and Fisher ratio F = 136.9. The QSAR results explain electron withdrawing, positive, negative ionic and hydrophobic groups are crucial for tubulin inhibition. The docking studies of these inhibitors on the active site of the beta-tubulin shows crucial hydrogen bond interactions with the Gln11, Asn101, Thr145 amino acids. These findings provide designing of novel compounds with better tubulin inhibitory potential.