Phytochemicals from Ayurvedic plants as potential medicaments for ovarian cancer: an in silico analysis

Ovarian cancer is one of the highly prominent gynecological malignancies after breast cancer. Although myriad literature is available, there is no specific biomarker available for the personalized treatment strategy. The unavailability of effective drug therapy for ovarian cancer calls for an urgent push in its development from the multidisciplinary scientific community. Indian Ayurvedic medicine pharmacology is widely appreciated and accepted for its immense healthcare benefits. Bioinformatics and cheminformatics approaches can be effectively used to screen phytochemicals present in the Indian Ayurvedic plants against ovarian cancer target receptors. Recent studies discern that POTE, a cancer-testis antigen (CTA) family, plays a crucial role in the proliferation and progression of cancers including ovarian cancer. Specifically, POTEE paralog has been observed to be hypermethylated in ovarian cancer. This study undertakes an in silico analysis of Indian Ayurvedic plants for their anticancer efficacy against ovarian cancer proliferation target receptor POTEE. Structures of 100 phytochemicals from 11 Ayurvedic plants were screened with ADME criteria, and qualified phytochemicals were subjected to molecular docking and interaction analysis. Only 6 phytochemicals having a high affinity to the target receptor (POTEE) were then subjected to an all-atom replica exchange molecular dynamics simulation for 50 ns. Binding affinities of 6 phytochemicals cedeodarin, deodarin, hematoxylin, matairesinol, quercetin, and taxifolin with POTEE were -8.1, -7.7, -7.7, -7.9, -8.0, and - 7.7 kcal/mol, respectively, and their RMSD were recorded as zero. This study concludes that phytochemicals present in Indian Ayurvedic plants namely Cedrus deodara and Asparagus racemosus possess inhibitory effects against ovarian cancer proliferation receptor POTEE.