A Potential PIK3CA Inhibitor to Develop an Anticancer Drug

According to the global cancer statistics published by the American Cancer Society (2020), the incidence and mortality of cancer are rapidly increasing worldwide. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new drugs that have greater effectiveness and lower side effects than the current drugs. In this study we used the PIK3CA enzyme as therapeutic target, because there are studies that showed that PIK3CA plays a critical role to develop cancer, strongly related to tumor proliferation, migration, and clinical prognosis by its functions on the PI33K/AKT signaling pathway. The aim of this research is to determine a selective compound to PIK3CA, by molecular docking using a library of nearly 500,000 compounds, to develop a new anticancer drug to decrease the PIK3CA functions in the cancer processes. It was determined the C5 compound with a cytotoxic effect on in vitro cultures of cancer cell lines, due to a probable specific interaction in PIK3CA, Cys420, Glu453, Glu542, Glu545 amino acids, this region is necessary for the catalytic subunit p110α in the PIK3CA enzyme. This research evaluated the potential anticancer effect of C5 compound with acceptable citotoxicity, toxicity theoretical and LD₅₀ results; other analyses will be necessary to continue this development as a new anticancer drug.