Natural products as potential inhibitors of FLT3 for acute myeloid leukemia: HTVS, docking, and molecular dynamic simulation

Cancer is one the most common health issues worldwide, with cancer-related mortality of 9.5 million in 2018, with an expectation to become 29.5 by 2040. Among others, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is common among older people. FLT3 mutations are one of the most common genetic aberrations found in Acute Myeloid Leukemia and are associated with poor prognosis. Herein, we attempt to identify natural compounds as potential candidates to treat AML by targeting the FLT3 kinase domain using in silico approaches. The COCONUT database, which contains 407,270 natural compounds, was HTVS against the FLT3 kinase domain active site, and promising compounds were subject to molecular docking. Finally, frontier compounds were validated further using molecular dynamic simulation. In total, ten compounds were identified with docking scores higher than Quizartinib (-11.606 kcal/mol), with the best three compounds showing a docking score of -18.052, -15.772, and -16.767 kcal, respectively, and compound 2 showing excellent stability in molecular dynamic simulation.