Focusing on the moderately active compound (MAC) in the design and development of strategies to optimize the apoptotic effect by molecular mechanics techniques

Today, chemotherapeutic agents are mostly used to fight cancer in clinics. But even though they have selectivity for cancer cells, their mechanism of action could result in necrosis. Therefore, we aimed to suggest new design strategies using a moderately active compound (MAC) to get better activity and increase the apoptotic effect in this study. Although MAC, previously synthesized and evaluated for its anticancer properties, has been marked as a moderately active compound, it has let us develop new molecules using its molecular core supported by molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation. The caspase-3 enzyme was subjected to density functional theory (DFT), docking, and molecular dynamics simulation studies, and the results were analyzed to better understand the structure-activity relationship (SAR); thus, new design strategies were proposed.