Multi-spectroscopic and molecular modeling approaches to elucidate the binding interaction between bovine serum albumin and darunavir, a HIV protease inhibitor

Darunavir (DRV), a second-generation HIV protease inhibitor, is widely used across the world as an important component of HIV therapy. The interaction of DRV with bovine serum albumin (BSA), a major carrier protein, has been studied under simulated physiological conditions (pH   7.4) by multi-spectroscopic techniques in combination with molecular modeling. Fluorescence data revealed that the intrinsic fluorescence of BSA was quenched by DRV in terms of a static quenching procedure due to the formation of the DRV-BSA complex. The results indicated the presence of single weak affinity binding site (~   10 3   M −   1 , 310   K) on protein. The thermodynamic parameters, namely enthalpy change (Δ H 0 ), entropy change (Δ S 0 ) and Gibbs free energy change (Δ G 0 ) were calculated, which signified that the binding reaction was spontaneous, the main binding forces were hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces . Importantly, competitive binding experiments with three site probes, phenylbutazone (in sub-domain IIA, site I), ibuprofen (in sub-domain IIIA, site II) and artemether (in the interface between sub-domain IIA and IIB, site II’), suggested that DRV was preferentially bound to the hydrophobic cavity in site II’ of BSA, and this finding was validated by the docking results. Additionally, synchronous fluorescence, three-dimensional fluorescence and Resonance Rayleigh Scattering (RRS) spectroscopy gave qualitative information on the conformational changes of BSA upon adding DRV, while quantitative data were obtained with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR).