RESEARCH ARTICLE Molecular Interaction of a Kinase Inhibitor Midostaurin with Anticancer Drug Targets, S100A8 and EGFR: Transcriptional Profiling and Molecular Docking Study for Kidney Cancer Therapeutics

The S100A8 and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) proteins are proto-oncogenes that are strongly expressed in a number of cancer types. EGFR promotes cellular prolifera-tion, differentiation, migration and survival by activating molecular pathways. Involvement of proinflammatory S100A8 in tumor cell differentiation and progression is largely unclear and not studied in kidney cancer (KC). S100A8 and EGFR are potential therapeutic biomarkers and anticancer drug targets for KC. In this study, we explored molecular mechanisms of in-teraction profiles of both molecules with potential anticancer drugs. We undertook transcrip-tional profiling in Saudi KCs using Affymetrix HuGene 1.0 ST arrays. We identified 1478 significantly expressed genes, including S100A8 and EGFR overexpression, using cut-off p=value<0.05 and fold change2. Additionally, we compared and confirmed our findings with expression data available at NCBI’s GEO database. A significant number of genes as-sociated with cancer showed involvement in cell cycle progression, DNA repair, tumor mor-phology, tissue development, and cell survival. Atherosclerosis signaling, leukocyte extravasation signaling, notch signaling, and IL-12 signaling were the most significantly dis