Design of Novel Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase Inhibitors for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: Molecular Docking, Molecular Dynamics, and Density Functional Theory Studies on Gold Nanoparticles

Abstract

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas are a diverse collection of lymphoproliferative cancers that are much less predictable than Hodgkin’s lymphomas with a far greater tendency to metastasize to extranodal sites. A quarter of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cases develop at extranodal sites and the majority of them involve nodal and extranodal sites. The most common subtypes include follicular lymphoma, chronic/small lymphocytic leukaemia, mantel cell lymphoma, and marginal zone lymphoma. Umbralisib is one of the latest PI3Kδ inhibitors in clinical trials for several hematologic cancer indications. In this study, new umbralisib analogues were designed and docked to the active site of PI3Kδ, the main target of the phosphoinositol-3-kinase/Akt/mammalian target of the rapamycin pathway (PI3K/AKT/mTOR). This study resulted in eleven candidates, with strong binding to PI3Kδ with a docking score between −7.66 and −8.42 Kcal/mol. The docking analysis of ligand–receptor interactions between umbralisib analogues bound to PI3K showed that their interactions were mainly controlled by hydrophobic interactions and, to a lesser extent, by hydrogen bonding. In addition, the MM-GBSA binding free energy was calculated. Analogue 306 showed the highest free energy of binding with −52.22 Kcal/mol. To identify the structural changes and the complexes’ stability of proposed ligands, molecular dynamic simulation was used. Based on this research finding, the best-designed analogue, analogue 306, formed a stable ligand–protein complex. In addition, pharmacokinetics and toxicity analysis using the QikProp tool demonstrated that analogue 306 had good absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion properties. Additionally, it has a promising predicted profile in immune toxicity, carcinogenicity, and cytotoxicity. In addition, analogue 306 had stable interactions with gold nanoparticles that have been studied using density functional theory calculations. The best interaction with gold was observed at the oxygen atom number 5 with −29.42 Kcal/mol. Further in vitro and in vivo investigations are recommended to be carried out to verify the anticancer activity of this analogue.