3D-QSAR (CoMFA, CoMFA-RG, CoMSIA) and Molecular Docking Study of Thienopyrimidine and Thienopyridine Derivatives to Explore Structural Requirements for Aurora-B Kinase Inhibition

Aurora-B kinase plays a crucial role in cell cycle events and is identified as an important factor in regulation of spindle check point assembly. Thus, it can be proved as an important target in the field of oncology. 3D-QSAR model was generated using 54 molecules reported in literature containing thienopyrimidine and thienopyridine as scaffolds. All molecules were aligned using Distill function in Sybyl X1.2. This generated best model of CoMFA-RG (Region focusing) and CoMSIA were statistically significant with correlation coefficient r(2)ncv of 0.97, for both & Leave one out coefficient (LOO) q(2) of 0.70 and 0.72, respectively. Best CoMSIA model was built up using various combination of descriptors and proved statistical significant among all models. Best CoMFA-RG and CoMSIA models were validated by 12 test set molecules giving satisfactory prediction (r(2)pred) values of 0.86 and 0.88, respectively. External test set validation was performed using 20 molecules and satisfactory prediction of their biological activity was found. Active compounds were docked on protein (PDB ID: 4C2V) by GOLD module and revealed important interactions with amino acids at ATP-binding region. These data explored insight requirements for Aurora-B inhibition which might be fruitful for understanding mechanisms with kinase ligand interactions.