Pharmacophore based Identification of Tubulin Inhibitors

Abstract

Cancer is the most commonly found disease nowadays and treatment for cancer involves targeting many biological pathways. Attempts to use biological agents to target Tubulin system has gained importance over other mechanisms attacking DNA, thus making Tubulin has been in the centre stage for cancer chemotherapy. Tubulin is a protein that forms microtubules which are involved in cell proliferation. The compounds that bind to the β-tubulin can inhibit the formation of microtubule through which cancer cell proliferation can be stopped. To find the structure of the β-tubulin of homosapiens, homology modeling has been done. Pharmacophore modeling has been carried out with nearly 49 compounds obtained from literature study. Molecules having similar pharmacophoric features have been searched through the use of zinc database. The obtained ligand molecules were properly validated using Lipinski rule based on which some of the molecule were filtered out. The binding efficiency of each drug is analysed using docking and finally the best drug molecules were selected