Molecular docking and dynamic simulation to identify potential phytocompound inhibitors for EGFR and HER2 as anti-breast cancer agents

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women worldwide. To treat human breast cancer by inhibiting EGFR and HER2 targets is an important therapeutic option. Phytochemicals are found to have beneficial health effects in treating various diseases. An effort has been made to virtually screen phytochemical inhibitor by molecular docking and dynamic simulation in the current studies. The docking scores analysis resulted in a common hit Panaxadiol ligand with a low dock score for EGFR and HER2 targets. The inhibitory action of the phytocompounds was also validated by comparing it with the reference compounds Erlotinib for EGFR and Neratinib for HER2. Molecular dynamic simulation of EGFR and HER2 lead complexes ensure the ligand's appropriate refinement in the dynamic system. The target and ligand complex interaction motif established a high affinity of lead candidates in a dynamic system similar to molecular docking results. This study reveals that Panaxadiol hit molecule can be developed as a novel multi-target EGFR and HER2 target inhibitor with greater potential and low toxicity. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma