Identification of new BACE1 inhibitors for treating Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a type of brain disorder, wherein a person experiences gradual memory loss, state of confusion, hallucination, agitation, and personality change. AD is marked by the presence of extracellular amyloid plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) and synaptic losses. Increased cases of AD in recent times created a dire need to discover or identify chemical compounds that can cease the development of AD. This study focuses on finding potential drug molecule(s) active against β-secretase, also known as β-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1). Clustering analysis followed by phylogenetic studies on microarray datasets retrieved from GEO browser showed that BACE1 gene has genetic relatedness with the RCAN1 gene. A ligand library comprising 60 natural compounds retrieved from literature and 25 synthetic compounds collected from DrugBank were screened. Further, 350 analogues of potential parent compounds were added to the library for the docking purposes. Molecular docking studies identified 11-oxotigogenin as the best ligand molecule. The compound showed the binding affinity of − 11.1 Kcal/mole and forms three hydrogen bonds with Trp124, Ile174, and Arg176. The protein-ligand complex was subjected to 25 ns molecular dynamics simulation and the potential energy of the complex was found to be − 1.24579e+06 Kcal/mole. In this study, 11-oxotigogenin has shown promising results against BACE1, which is a leading cause of AD, hence warrants for in vitro and in vivo validation of the same. In addition, in silico identification of 11-oxotigogenin as a potential anti-AD compound paves the way for designing of chemical scaffolds to discover more potent BACE1 inhibitors. Graphical abstract[Figure not available: see fulltext.]