In Silico Identification of Novel Erlotinib Analogues Against Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor

Cancer is one of the major health challenges in modern times. Considering its high mortality rate, many proteins that are linked to cancer have been targeted for therapy, with one of them being the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). A drug that is currently in the market for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer and targets EGFR is erlotinib. In a quest for improved efficacy of erlotinib, herein we report molecular docking studies of thirteen erlotinib analogues by modification of the alkyne and anilino groups, all of which displayed better binding affinity than erlotinib. We identified aziridinyl analogue (S)-13b with the best binding energy of all the analogues studied.