In silico Anti-malaria Activity of Quinolone Compounds against Plasmodium falciparum Dihydrofolate Reductase (pfDHFR)

Chemotherapy remains the kernel of malaria control and the available antimalarial drugs are not only expensive but also parade heterogeneous levels of toxicity and may invoke poor compliance in patients. The present study focuses on the screening of quinolone compounds against Plasmodium falciparum dihydrofolate reductase (pfDHFR) for anti-malarial potential using Glide (Schrodinger maestro 2017-1). Computational tool using Glide was employed to investigate the therapeutic relevance of six (6) quinolone derivatives retrieved from PUBCHEM via molecular docking against pfDHFR retrieved from protein data base. The results showed that, Lascufloxacin and moxifloxacin bind with higher affinity and lower free energy with catalytic domain of pfDHFR with glide score of -6.597 and -5.653 respectively compared to standard ligand (quinine) with glide score of -3.728. Lascufloxacin interacted with amino acid residue of the catalytic domain (SER 511, ARG 510, GLU 382) as evaluated by energy decomposition per residue lascufloxacin-pfDHFRcomplex. The results from this investigation, thus proposed quinolone derivatives as hit lead drug candidates which may be consider as potential inhibitor of pfDHFR.