Evaluation of In vitro anti-inflammatory activity and Insilico pharmacokinetics and molecular docking study of Horsfieldia iryaghedhi

Phytochemicals are still a valuable source to develop clinically important drugs in treating chronic and acute diseases. Inflammation is a response to an injurious stimulus of the body and novel therapeutic agents are needed to alleviate the condition with minimum side effects. Matured and fully expanded fresh leaves and barks of H. iryaghedhi were collected, and the extractions were obtained cold maceration using 99.9% methanol and distilled water as solvents. A concentration series was then developed, and the anti-inflammatory activity was evaluated against Diclofenac sodium as the positive control, using the heat-induced egg albumin denaturation method. Further, selected phytochemicals were tested against COX-2 enzyme (PDB ID: 5IKR) using site-specific molecular docking with autodock vina and the binding energies and pharmacokinetic and toxicity parameters were evaluated. Results: The methanol and aqueous extracts have shown a moderate to strong concentration-dependent anti-inflammatory activity with reference to standard Diclofenac sodium and Methanol bark extract exhibited potent anti-inflammatory activity compared to other extracts . Further, Methanol and aqueous extracts showed a statistically significant correlation between concentration and percentage inhibition. The molecular docking results suggest that the phytochemicals available on the plant have possible COX-2 inhibitory activity and the compounds selected (Methyl 2,4- dihydroxy-6-methylbenzoate and N, N-Dimethyl-5-methoxy tryptamine) even got favourable toxicity and pharmacokinetic parameters confirming their drugability.