Spectroscopic Investigation of the Interactions of Cryptotanshinone and Icariin with Two Serum Albumins

The interactions of two drugs, cryptotanshinone (CTS) and icariin, with bovine serum albumin (BSA) and human serum albumin (HSA) have been investigated using multiple spectroscopic techniques under imitated physiological conditions. CTS and icariin can quench the fluorescence intensity of BSA/HSA by a static quenching mechanism with complex formation. The binding constants of CTS–BSA, CTS–HSA, icariin–BSA and icariin–HSA complexes were observed to be 1.67 × 10⁴, 4.04 × 10⁴, 4.52 × 10⁵ and 4.20 × 10⁵ L·mol^?1, respectively at 298.15 K. The displacement experiments suggested icariin/CTS are primarily bound to tryptophan residues of the proteins within site I and site II. The thermodynamic parameters calculated on the basis of the temperature dependence of the binding constants revealed that the binding of CTS–BSA/HSA mainly depends on van der Waals interaction and hydrogen bonds, and yet the binding of icariin–HSA/BSA strongly relies on the hydrophobic interactions. The binding distances between BSA/HSA and CTS/icariin were evaluated by the Föster non-radiative energy transfer theory. The results of synchronous fluorescence, 3D fluorescence, FT-IR and CD spectra indicates that the conformations of proteins were altered with the addition of CTS or icariin. In addition, the effects of some common ions on the binding constants of CTS/icariin to proteins are also discussed.