Designing new chromene compounds with anticancer activity and studying their interaction with tubulin by molecular docking method

Currently, in silico methods considered as one of the least expensive and fastest ways for drug design and discovery in the field of therapy. In the present study, we were interested to introduce compounds, which have an important role in inhibiting tubulins polymerization as the main factor of cell division in cancerous cells using computational drug design, especially molecular docking method. For this purpose, chromene compounds, which their anticancer properties had been tested by several researchers, were gathered and based on their binding site of tubulin, new analogs were designed. Then, by using AutoDock Vina software, stronger compounds which had the lowest affinity energy, were identified and their possible interaction with the colchinine binding site analyzed by LigPlot and UCSF Chimera. Given that newly designed compounds docked to the protein structure with lower affinity energy than colchicine as the control sample, they could be the subject of further assessment as the potential pharmaceutical compounds.