Experimental and Computational Investigation on the Interaction of Anticancer Drug Gemcitabine with Human Plasma Protein: Effect of Copresence of Ibuprofen on the Binding

The interaction of common anticancer drug gemcitabine with human serum albumin (HSA) has been studied in detail. The effect of an omnipresent nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen was also seen on the binding of HSA and gemcitabine. A slight hyperchromic shift in the difference UV-visible absorption spectra of HSA on the addition of gemcitabine gave a primary idea of the possible complex formation between them. The inner filter effect, which happens due to the significant absorbance of the ligand at the excitation and/or emission wavelengths, played an important role in the observed fluorescence quenching of HSA by gemcitabine that can be understood by comparing the observed and corrected fluorescence intensities obtained at λ(ex) = 280 nm and 295 nm. Gemcitabine showed weak interaction with HSA, which took place via a dynamic quenching mechanism with 1:1 cooperative binding between them. Secondary structural analysis, based on circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, showed that low concentrations of gemcitabine did not affect the native structure of protein; however, higher concentrations affected it slightly with partial unfolding. For understanding the binding site of gemcitabine within HSA, both experimental (using site markers, warfarin and ibuprofen) as well as computational methods were employed, which revealed that the gemcitabine binding site is located between the interface of subdomain IIA and IIB within the close proximity of the warfarin site (drug site 1). The effect of ibuprofen on the binding was further elaborated because of the possibility of its coexistence with gemcitabine in the prescription given to the cancer patients, and it was noticed that, ibuprofen, even present in high amounts, did not affect the binding efficacy of gemcitabine with HSA. DFT analyses of various conformers of gemcitabine obtained from its docking with various structures of HSA (free and bounded with site markers), show that the stability of the gemcitabine molecule increased slightly after binding with ibuprofen-complexed HSA. Both experimental as well as computational results were in good agreement with each other.