AN IN SILICO PHARMACOKINETIC INVESTIGATION OF ORGANIC LUMINOGENS: UNDERSTANDING THE NIR AIEGENS AND THEIR INTERACTIONS WITH SERUM ALBUMINS

Abstract

Objective: Fluorescence imaging (FLI) is accepted as a highly effective method for visualizing bioanalytics directly and gaining insight into complicated biological structures and processes. In this context, newly tailored organic molecules, which have the potential to be used in FLI, especially near-infrared (NIR) regions supported by aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens), are a rapidly developing area of study. Herein, using ADMET and molecular docking analyses, we examined the pharmacokinetic properties of both model (D2-A2-D2) and newly designed (Dn-An-Dn) organic luminogens to interact with blood proteins, namely bovine serum albumin (BSA) and human serum albumin (HSA), which have emerged as a versatile carrier of several therapeutic agents against preliminary cancer and infectious diseases. Material and Method: The structural properties of the examined luminogens were computed using the Gaussian 09 software package. The DFT/B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level was then utilized for geometry optimization and accurately determining electronic structures and molecular properties. Lipinski's rule of five was applied to predict the drugability of the compounds using the SwissADME web tool. Molinspiration was used for further validation of these properties and additional bioactivity parameters. Toxicity parameters were evaluated with OSIRIS Property Explorer (v.4.5.1). Molecular docking simulations of the luminogen-albumin complexes were performed using SAMSON 2022 R2 modeling platform and implemented Autodock-vina extension. The X-ray crystal structures of bovine serum albumin (BSA, PDB ID: 4F5S) and human serum albumin (HSA, PDB ID: 4L9Q) were obtained from the Protein Data Bank. Visualization of the docking interactions was conducted using Discovery Studio Visualizer 2021. Result and Discussion: The compounds D1-A1-D1 and D1-A4-D1 stood out concerning molecular weight (MW) and ClogPo/w values, making them promising candidates for drug design. An analysis of lipophilicity revealed that these two compounds displayed high miLogP values, indicating a high degree of lipophilicity, which is generally beneficial for drug delivery. They also exhibited moderate bioactivity based on GPCR ligand and protease inhibitor (PI) parameters. On the other hand, D4-A3-D4 showcased paramount interaction with bovine serum albumin (BSA), while D5-A3-D5 demonstrated the highest binding affinity with human serum albumin (HSA).