Inhibitory effects of deferasirox on the structure and function of bovine liver catalase: a spectroscopic and theoretical study

Deferasirox (DFX), as an oral chelator, is used for treatment of transfusional iron overload. In this study, we have investigated the effects of DFX as an iron chelator, on the function and structure of bovine liver catalase (BLC) by different spectroscopic methods of UV–visible, fluorescence, and circular dichroism (CD) at two temperatures of 25 and 37 °C. In vitrokinetic studies showed that DFX can inhibit the enzymatic activity in a competitive manner. KIvalue was calculated 39 nM according to the Lineweaver–Burk plot indicating a high rate of inhibition of the enzyme. Intrinsic fluorescence data showed that increasing the drug concentrations leads to a significant decrease in the intrinsic emission of the enzyme indicating a significant change in the three-dimensional environment around the chromophores of the enzyme structure. By analyzing the fluorescence quenching data, it was found that the BLC has two binding sites for DFX and the values of binding constant at 25 and 37 °C were calculated 1.7 × 107and 3 × 107 M−1, respectively. The static type of quenching mechanism is involved in the quenching of intrinsic emission of enzyme. The thermodynamic data suggest that hydrophobic interactions play a major role in the binding reaction. UV–vis spectroscopy results represented the changes in tryptophan (Trp) absorption and Soret band spectra, which indicated changes in Trp and heme group position caused by the drug binding. Also, CD data represented that high concentrations of DFX lead to a significant decreasing in the content of β-sheet and random coil accompanied an increasing in α-helical content of the protein. The molecular docking results indicate that docking may be an appropriate method for prediction and confirmation of experimental results and also useful for determining the binding mechanism of proteins and drugs. According to above results, it can be concluded that the DFX can chelate the Fe(III) on the enzyme active site leading to changes in the function and structure of catalase which can be considered as a side effect of this drug and consequently has an important role in hepatic complications and fibrosis.