In silico molecular docking studies of new potential 4-phthalazinyl-hydrazones on selected Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania enzyme targets

Abstract Recently, a series of 4-phthalazinyl-hydrazones under its E -configuration have exhibited excellent in vitro antichagasic and antileishmanial profiles. Preliminary assays on both parasites suggested that the most active derivatives act through oxidative and nitrosative stress mechanisms; however, their exact mode of actions as anti-trypanosomal and anti-leishmanial agents have not been completely elucidated. This motivated to perform a molecular docking study on essential trypanosomatid enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), trypanothione reductase (TryR), cysteine-protease (CP) and pteridine reductase 1 (PTR1). In addition, to understand the experimental results of nitric oxide production obtained for infected macrophages with Leishmania parasite, a molecular docking was evaluated on nitric oxide synthase ( i NOS) enzyme of Rattus norvegicus . Both diastereomers ( E and Z ) of the 4-phthalazinyl-hydrazones were docked on the mentioned targets. In general, molecular docking on T. cruzi enzymes revealed that the E -diastereomers exhibited lower binding energies than Z-diastereomers on the Fe-SOD and CP enzymes, while Z-diastereomers showed lower docking energies than E -isomers on TryR enzyme. For the Leishmania docking studies, the Z-isomers exhibited the best binding affinities on the PTR1 and i NOS enzymes, while the TryR enzyme showed a minor dependence with the stereoselectivity of the tested phthalazines. However, either the structural information of the ligand-enzyme complexes or the experimental data suggest that the significant antitrypanosomatid activity of the most active derivatives is not associated to the inhibition of the SOD, CP and PTR1 enzymes, while the TryR inhibition and nitric oxide generation in host cells emerge as interesting antitrypanosomatid therapeutic targets.