Bioinformatics Study of Pioglitazone Analogues as Potential Anti-Diabetic Drugs

The challenges of the twenty-first century for the pharmaceutical industry are to deliver new and safe medicines within a short period of time. Novel drug discovery is a complex and expensive process with decades of the venture. With the present technologies and inventions, the task is much faster in recent years. Computer simulations give the dynamic picture of the reactions along with the potential drug molecule. Diabetes is a carbohydrate disorder caused due to the effect of environment, which results in increased hepatic glucose production, decreased insulin secretion. It hinders the function of eyes, kidneys, heart, nerves and blood vessels. The most commonly available drug for diabetes involves Metformin, Sulfonylureas, Meglitinide and Thiazolidinedione which cause severe damage to internal organs and many diseases like bladder cancer, hypoglycemia, risk of liver disease and many more. Docking techniques ease the identification of potential drug molecules to specific target. The present work aims at molecular docking studies on derivatives of pioglitazone while taking pioglitazone as reference. Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor gamma (PPAR-gamma) was taken as receptor and the derivatives were docked by using Autodock software. Docking results showed that pioglitazone derivatives were active against PPAR-gamma with enhanced binding affinity when compared to standard marketed drug i.e. Pioglitazone. Molecular docking studies on the pioglitazone derivatives indicate that they may be used as a promising antidiabetic drug.