Binding interaction of a gamma-aminobutyric acid derivative with serum albumin: an insight by fluorescence and molecular modeling analysis

gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a naturally occurring inhibitory neurotransmitter and some of its derivatives showed potential to act as neuroprotective agents. With the aim of developing potential leads for anti-Alzheimer's drugs, in this study we synthesized a novel GABA derivative, methyl 4-(4-((2-(tert-butoxy)-2-oxoethyl)(4-methoxyphenyl)amino)benzamido)butanoate by a unique method of Buchwald-Hartwig cross coupling synthesis; with some modification the yield was significant (97 %) and spectroscopic analysis confirmed that the compound was highly pure (98.8 % by HPLC). The druglikeness properties such as logP, logS, and polar surface area were 3.87, -4.86 and 94.17 Å(2) respectively and it satisfied the Lipinski's rule of five. We examined the binding behavior of the molecule to human serum albumin (HSA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) which are known as universal drug carrier proteins. The molecule binds to the proteins with low micromolar efficiency and the calculated binding constants were 3.85 and 2.75 micromolar for BSA and HSA, respectively. Temperature dependent study using van't Hoff equation established that the binding was thermodynamically favorable and the changes in the Gibb's free energy, ΔG for the binding process was negative. However, the binding of the molecule to HSA was enthalpy driven and the change of enthalpy (ΔH) was -10.63 kJ/mol, whereas, the binding to BSA was entropy driven and the change in entropy ΔS was 222 J/mol. The molecular docking analysis showed that the binding sites of the molecule lie in the groove between domain I and domain III of BSA, whereas it is within the domain I in case of HSA, which also supported the different thermodynamic nature of binding with HSA and BSA. Molecular dynamics analysis suggested that the binding was stable with time and provided further details of the binding interaction. Molecular dynamics study also highlighted the effect of this ligand binding on the serum albumin structure.