De-novo Drug Design, Molecular Docking and In-Silico Molecular Prediction of AChEI Analogues through CADD Approaches as Anti-Alzheimer's Agents

Background: There are over 44 million persons who suffer with Alzheimer's disease (AD) worldwide, no existence of cure and only symptomatic treatments are available for it. The aim of this study is to evaluate the anti-Alzheimer potential of designed AChEI analogues using computer simulation docking studies. AChEIs are the most potential standards for treatment of AD, because they have proven efficacy. Among all AChEIs donepezil possesses lowest adverse effects, it can treat mild-moderate-severe AD and only once-daily dosing is required. Therefore, donepezil is recognized as a significant prototype for design and development of new drug molecule. Methods: In this study the Inhibitory potential of the design compounds on acetylcholinesterase enzyme has been evaluated. Docking studies has been performed which further analyzed by in-silico pharmacokinetic evaluation through pharmacopredicta after that Interaction modes with enzyme active sites were determined. Docking studies revealed that there is a strong interaction between the active sites of AChE enzyme and analyzed compounds. Results: As a result 26 compounds have been indicates better inhibitory activity on AChE enzyme and all the screening parameters have also been satisfied by all 26 compounds. From these 26 compounds, six compounds 17, 18, 24, 30, 36 and 56 are found to be the most potent inhibitors of this series by in-silico study through INVENTUS v 1.1 software, having highest bio-affinities i.e. - 8.51, - 7.67, - 8.30, - 7.59, - 8.71 and -7.62 kcal/mol respectively, while the standard or reference drug donepezil had binding affinity of -6.32 kcal/mol. Conclusion: Computer aided drug design approach has been playing an important role in the design and development of novel anti-AD drugs. With the help of structure based drug design some novel analogues of donepezil have been designed and the molecular docking studies with structure based AD-ME properties prediction studies is performed for prediction of AChE inhibitory activity. The binding mode of proposed compounds with target protein i.e. AChE has been evaluated and the resulting data from docking studies explains that all of the newly designed analogues had significantly high affinity towards target protein compared to donepezil as a reference ligand.