In-silico molecular docking, ADME study, and molecular dynamic simulation of new azetidin-2-one derivatives with antiproliferative activity

Over the past two decades, protein kinase has been a heavily studied target in the development of new anti-proliferative medications. Heterocyclic systems have been identified as the preferred scaffold because of their wide range of biological properties. In this research, the objective was to design and develop fifteen novel azetidin-2-one derivatives and assess their cytotoxic potential as inhibitors of the epidermal growth factor receptor, which is considered one of the key factors influencing cell growth and proliferation. The crystal structure of inactive EGFR tyrosine kinase domain ligand erlotinib from protein data bank was retrieved in order to be docked with our proposed azetidine-2-one derivatives to evaluate their activity as anti-proliferative agents. In this article, an in-silico molecular docking approach proposes that these azetidine-2-one derivatives have satisfactory binding contact with the erlotinib binding site. Although, three compounds have been identified as the most powerful as they have PLP fitness scores of (77.79, 76.68 and 71.46), respectively, while the reference ligand’s fitness score was (71.94). Additionally, all of our derivatives have satisfied the Swiss-ADME parameters, indicating that they may be orally active compounds. In conclusion, two compounds (A-2 and A-8) have better PLP fitness, and one (A-14) has a comparable score in comparison to the reference ligand, at the active site of epidermal growth factor receptor. indicating that the novel azetidine-2-one derivatives have shown interesting results and could be used as model compounds to create novel anti-proliferative drugs. However, more pharmacological evaluation is needed.