Molecular investigation of modified β-cyclodextrin and cholesterol inclusion complexes through molecular docking simulations

Hypertension, a medical condition which commonly associated with cardiovascular diseases, the most lethal non-communicable diseases in the world, is indicated by the high blood cholesterol level. Thus, maintaining the blood cholesterol level is essential especially for hypertension-diagnosed patients. In this study, the molecular docking simulations were successfully performed between cholesterol and methylene blue (MB) with the modified β-cyclodextrin (BCD) compounds as the guest and host molecules, respectively, to investigate their molecular interaction when forming the inclusion complexes. The docking results showed that the modification on the -OH hydroxyl group at position 6 of BCD improves the binding affinity of the cholesterol when forming the inclusion complex, where the -OCH3 modification has the highest binding affinity toward cholesterol, with ΔGbinding value of -5.9 kcal/mol, followed by -OCH2CHO, -OCH2COOH and -OCOCOH(COOH)2, with ΔGbinding value of -5.8 kcal/mol. Moreover, the hydrophobic and van der Waals interactions were observed as the most dominant interactions when both BCD-modified compounds/cholesterol and BCD-modified compounds/MB inclusion complexes were formed. Thus, the electrochemical technique can be employed toward the cholesterol and these BCD-modified compounds to validate the docking results and determine its sensitivity as cholesterol sensor.