Imidazo[1,2-a]pyrazine inhibitors of phosphoinositide 3-kinase alpha (PI3Kα): 3D-QSAR analysis utilizing the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm to refine receptor-ligand complexes for molecular alignment

Phosphoinositide 3-kinase alpha (PI3Kα) is a lipid kinase involved in several cellular functions such as cell growth, proliferation, differentiation and survival, and its anomalous regulation leads to cancerous conditions. PI3Kα inhibition completely blocks the cancer signalling pathway, hence it can be explored as an important therapeutic target for cancer treatment. In the present study, docking analysis of 49 selective imidazo1,2-a]pyrazine inhibitors of PI3Kα was carried out using the QM-Polarized ligand docking (QPLD) program of the Schrödinger software, followed by the refinement of receptor–ligand conformations using the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm in the Liaison program, and alignment of refined conformations of inhibitors was utilized for the development of an atom-based 3D-QSAR model in the PHASE program. Among the five generated models, the best model was selected corresponding to PLS factor 2, displaying the highest value of Q²_test (0.650). The selected model also displayed high values of r²_train (0.917), F-value (166.5) and Pearson-r (0.877) and a low value of SD (0.265). The contour plots generated for the selected 3D-QSAR model were correlated with the results of docking simulations. Finally, this combined information generated from 3D-QSAR and docking analysis was used to design new congeners.