Frankincense essential oil extraction and lead compound analysis into cancer cells using molecular docking

Abstract

Oil was extracted from Frankincense (Boswellia Sacra) by the soxhlet extraction method and various bioactive compounds were identified using gas chromatography (GC). These compounds can be developed as active pharmacophores. The present study involves the extraction and identification of bioactive compounds and their in-vitro study on the interaction of these compounds to target proteins. Frankincense oil collected from Boswelia Sacra species was subjected to Soxhlet extraction using Hexane solvent and essential oil (EO) was separated using vacuum distillation. Chemical profiling of essential oil was done using GC-MS. Various biological databases like PubChem, Protein Data Bank and software like Argus Lab, RasMol were used to retrieve and analyze the structural and molecular interactions of bioactive compounds from Frankincense oil with receptor proteins. The target protein structure was retrieved from Protein data bank ligand structures that were downloaded from PubChem, which was visualized using Rasmol Software. Protein-ligand interaction was studied using Argus Lab software by docking simulations and various docking poses were analyzed. The energy values of docking conformations were analyzed for obtaining the best docking pose & score.