Molecular docking studies of curcumin derivatives with multiple protein targets for procarcinogen activating enzyme inhibition

Curcumin derivatives which are very potent antioxidant, free radical scavenger and known inhibitor of dioxygenases have been extensively studied to explore their potential utilization in chemoprevention. The main objective of the present work is to perform a docking analysis of curcumin derivatives: Tetrahydrocurcumin (THC), Bisdemethoxy curcumin (BDC). Docking studies of these were performed using GOLD and AutoDock into a few well validated targets of anticancer therapy (COX-2, PhenolsulphoTransferases, Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), P450 and TNF-alpha). A good correlation was observed in binding affinity of THC and BDC against the targets indicating these derivatives are potent procarcinogen activating enzyme inhibitors. © 2010 Girija CR, et al