Quantum mechanical approaches and molecular docking studies of platinum based anticancer drugs Satraplatin and picoplatin structures

The structures of the anticancer drug compounds satraplatin and picoplatin are optimized, and theoretical studies done by Density Functional Theory (DFT) to investigate the optical properties, global chemical descriptors, and band gap were calculated using the obtained Frontier molecular orbital values. The theoretically obtained data of the platinum drugs found to possess low energy gap values and low chemical hardness with high chemical softness describe that the compounds are chemically stable and most reactive. Using the molecular docking process, the binding mechanisms of the satraplatin and picoplatin drugs with cancer DNA structures were studied, and the results were analyzed. For the two drug compounds examined, satraplatin has shown the least binding energies at -5.06kcal/mol compared to picoplatin at -2.69 kcal/mol, and conformations with root mean square deviation (RMSD) values by DNA structures are less than or equal to 2.00 Å in targeting the specific DNA target residues of the reference bound ligand. The grid box was generated using the selective grid parameters using the Autodock 4.2 program. The drug molecules found to have the least binding energy value with the lowest inhibition constant implicate the good docking score towards the DNA structure by the docking studies. DFT studies also show good structural properties and chemical reactivity. From the obtained results, satraplatin and picoplatin were found to have good chemical descriptors and good binding affinity and are best suited for biological molecular targets.