Evidence Hub

Mutant-Selective Binding of Phyllanthus niruri Phytochemicals to EGFR T790M: A Quantum-Classical Mechanistic Study

Lituma-González WD, Dinesh Kumar D, Arunprasad AV, Verma T, Pillai S, Jimenez FR, Mahalingam SJ, Lakshmanan S

International journal of molecular sciences, 2026

Abstract

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations drive hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) progression, and the T790M gatekeeper substitution is the predominant mechanism of acquired resistance to EGFR-targeted therapies. Herein, we present multiscale quantum-classical in silico predictions of Phyllanthus niruri phytochemicals as non-covalent EGFR T790M binders, employing molecular docking, 100 ns molecular dynamics, MM-PBSA/MM-GBSA, per-residue decomposition, PCA/LDA, DFT at B3LYP-D3(BJ)/def2-TZVP, and comparative wild-type EGFR simulations. Five phytochemicals exhibited computationally predicted binding affinities against EGFR T790M exceeding the non-covalent binding component of osimertinib (-25.74 kcal/mol): corilagin (-53.71 ± 5.05 kcal/mol), eriodictyol-7-rhamnopyranoside (-44.35 ± 4.51 kcal/mol), isoquercetin (-44.23 ± 2.92 kcal/mol), rutin (-42.15 ± 4.50 kcal/mol), and kaempferol-4-rhamnoside (-41.68 ± 3.69 kcal/mol). Wild-type EGFR simulations (PDB 1M17) yielded a selectivity index (IS) of 2.76 for corilagin (ΔΔGbind = +34.22 kcal/mol), indicating T790M-preferential binding. Osimertinib reproduced its clinically established T790M selectivity under identical conditions (IS = 1.43; ΔΔGbind = +7.74 kcal/mol), providing internal methodological validation. DFT at B3LYP-D3(BJ)/def2-TZVP established the quantum-mechanical basis for corilagin's electrostatic affinity: its molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) surface minimum (Vs,min = -46.92 kcal/mol) directly predicts the…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free