Investigation of the inhibitory behavior of XFE and mitoxantrone molecules in interaction with AKT1 protein: a molecular dynamics simulation study

The PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway is one of the important pathways in many cancers. Akt is a serine-threonine kinase protein identified as a drug target for cancer treatment. Therefore, anticancer drugs are essential therapeutic targets for this pathway. In the current study, the inhibitory effect of two anticancer molecules, XFE and mitoxantrone, on AKT1 protein that can impact the activity of the AKT1 protein was investigated by using molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The molecular docking results presented a relatively higher binding affinity of the mitoxantrone molecule in interaction with AKT1 than the XFE molecule. These results were validated by the MM/PBSA technique that was performed on obtained trajectories of 25 ns MD simulations. The mitoxantrone molecule has an intense binding energy of − 880.536 kcal/mol with AKT1 protein, while the XFE molecule shows a binding energy value of − 83.569 kcal/mol. Our findings from molecular dynamics simulations indicated that both molecules have favorite interactions with AKT1 protein. Other analyses, such as RMSF and hydrogen binding on trajectories obtained from MD simulations, indicated that the mitoxantrone molecule could be a relatively potent inhibitor for AKT1. Based on the results of this study and the structure of mitoxantrone, it is expected to be a good candidate for cancer treatment as a (PI3K)/Akt/mTOR inhibitor.