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Korea Genome Organization (한국유전체학회)
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Screening of novel alkaloid inhibitors for vascular endothelial growth factor in cancer cells: an integrated computational approach

  • Shahik, Shah Md. (Molecular Biology Department, AFC Agro Biotech Ltd.) ;
  • Salauddin, Asma (Bioinformatics Division, Disease Biology and Molecular Epidemiology Research Group(dBme)) ;
  • Hossain, Md. Shakhawat (Bioinformatics Division, Disease Biology and Molecular Epidemiology Research Group(dBme)) ;
  • Noyon, Sajjad Hossain (Bioinformatics Division, Disease Biology and Molecular Epidemiology Research Group(dBme)) ;
  • Moin, Abu Tayab (Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Chittagong) ;
  • Mizan, Shagufta (Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Chittagong) ;
  • Raza, Md. Thosif (Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Chittagong)
  • Received : 2020.11.24
  • Accepted : 2021.02.11
  • Published : 2021.03.31
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Abstract

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is expressed at elevated levels by most cancer cells, which can stimulate vascular endothelial cell growth, survival, proliferation as well as trigger angiogenesis modulated by VEGF and VEGFR (a tyrosine kinase receptor) signaling. The angiogenic effects of the VEGF family are thought to be primarily mediated through the interaction of VEGF with VEGFR-2. Targeting this signaling molecule and its receptor is a novel approach for blocking angiogenesis. In recent years virtual high throughput screening has emerged as a widely accepted powerful technique in the identification of novel and diverse leads. The high resolution X-ray structure of VEGF has paved the way to introduce new small molecular inhibitors by structure-based virtual screening. In this study using different alkaloid molecules as potential novel inhibitors of VEGF, we proposed three alkaloid candidates for inhibiting VEGF and VEGFR mediated angiogenesis. As these three alkaloid compounds exhibited high scoring functions, which also highlights their high binding ability, it is evident that these alkaloids can be taken to further drug development pipelines for use as novel lead compounds to design new and effective drugs against cancer.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

We cordially thank Md. Saiful Islam, PhD Candidate/Researcher at Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg and Graduate Research Assistant at Universitatsklinikum Freiburg, for his critical and valuable suggestions on the analysis and the manuscript preparation.

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